(Image: Broadway Business Improvement Association)
A new mural of Marsha P. Johnson, the drag queen of Stonewall, now stretches down a block of Capitol Hill at Broadway and Harrison.
The Broadway Business Improvement Association project on the side of the street’s Crossroads Trading building is part of new LGBTQIA+ art and banners coming to Broadway over the next couple of months, the organization says.
Artist Jiéyì Zhou created the work with support from PrideFest in the project funded by the BIA and retailer Crossroads which has included the 1940s era building in its real estate portfolio since 2008.
PrideFest and the Broadway BIA are both headed by community leader Egan Orion.
A plan to expand Broadway’s BIA, which has been in place since 1986, to the rest of the business districts of Capitol Hill fell apart but 15th Ave E merchants carried on with their own plan for a BIA in 2021.
Johnson is remembered as a gay rights advocate and civil rights icon who was a prominent figure in New York’s Stonewall riots of 1969.
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This is great! And hopefully it will deter graffiti on that wall, which has been a frequent target of graffiti vandals for years.
Not sure why it would deter graffiti. In fact, unfortunately, I give it two weeks before it has been defaced. Sad, because I also like it.
Graffiti taggers usually concentrate on bland, unembelleshed structures and leave artwork alone. I don’t know if it’s a code, but I’ve seen it many times.
Beautiful!
More of this all over the Hill, please.