Seattle LGBT Center History
The founding vision for Queen City Community Development and The Seattle LGBT Community Center began in the early 1970’s when a Gay Community Center was established in a small downtown building. The Center was started by the late Faygele ben Miriam, founder of Gay Community Social Services, Washington’s first gay nonprofit. Although that Center survived for only a couple of years, Faygele’s vision of a community center inspired other community activists in the mid 1990’s to resurrect the concept. In 1996, Queen City Community Development was founded and began work to bring back a community center to Seattle’s LGBT community. At that time Seattle was practically the only major city in the country that did not have a lesbian and gay community center at that time. This group of visionary community leaders set out to change that fact.
In 2007, Gay Community Social Services, a long-standing community organization merged with the Center. Read more about the history of GCSS here
The Seattle LGBT Community Center mission is to provide opportunities and tools for LGBT individuals, organizations and communities that ensure their voices can be heard, included and affirmed; to be a place to engage, organize and effect change.
