San Francisco is moving to preserve the home of a lesbian couple who spent decades fighting for civil rights as a historic landmark.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to designate 651 Duncan Street, the two-story Noe Valley cottage where Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin lived for 53 years, as a historic landmark. The pair moved into the 5,700 square-foot property in 1955 after Lyon and Martin met in Seattle in 1949 while working at the same construction trade journal.
The pair would go onto found the Daughters of Bilitis, the oldest civil rights organization for lesbians in the U.S., the same year they acquired the residence. During its 14-year run, the group published The Ladder, the first lesbian publication ever to be distributed nationally.
Lyon and Martin would continue to blaze a trail throughout their lives. Martin was the first out lesbian to sit on the board of directors for the National Organization for Women, and the couple was the first same-sex couple to marry in California in 2004, when then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom permitted same-sex partners to wed in defiance of the state. The marriages were invalidated by the California Supreme Court in 2004, leading Lyon and Martin to make history again when the state legalized marriage equality in 2008.
Although same-sex marriage was overturned at the ballot box following the passage of California’s infamous Proposition 8, their marriage would remain on the books. It would take another five years of legal battles before marriage rights for same-sex couples in California were the immutable law of the land.
But Martin never lived to see the 2013 Supreme Court ruling validating the rights of all California couples to marry, or its historic decision legalizing marriage equality in all 50 states just two years later. She died shortly after the couple’s second wedding in 2008, and Lyon passed away earlier this year. Martin was 87 at the time of her death, and Lyon was 95.
Given the couple’s contribution to LGBTQ+ life, San Francisco supervisors felt that preserving the home where so much of their activism and organizing took place is absolutely imperative.
“If there is a deserving landmark, this is certainly it,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, in comments cited by the Bay Area Reporter.
Although the action is largely symbolic, the Reporter noted that granting a home historic status provides “level of protection to the property should its new owners submit plans to raze it in order to build a larger structure.” This has been a major concern of local historians after the building sold for $2.25 million in September to buyer David R. Duncan, who has reportedly refused calls from the media.
When the sale was finalized, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that the property was ripe for development. “Homes in this area have easily sold for $5-6M, so as long as a person keeps construction costs under control, a turn over of this property could be very profitable,” the paper reported.
In addition, though San Francisco is one of the country’s most expensive and rapidly gentrifying rental markets, the pandemic has somewhat curbed new developments.
Shayne Watson, a historic preservation planner, said he was “alarmed” when he learned the home could potentially be razed in favor of, say, luxury condominiums. “The Lyon-Martin house is not only one of the most significant queer sites in the city, but a place of international importance — truly a birthplace of LGBTQ-rights movements worldwide,” he said in a press release.
Following this week’s vote, the San Francisco Planning Department and Historic Preservation Commission will issue a recommendation on the property within 90 days, and the Board of Supervisors will be entrusted with taking further action.
The move is being spearheaded in conjunction with Friends of the Lyon-Martin House, which was formed to ensure the property’s historic designation. Currently, only four other LGBTQ+ sites have been granted that status, and these include the former home of slain civil rights leader Harvey Milk and the site of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
At this week’s meeting, Supervisor Rafael Mandelman — who is leading the board’s efforts — was quoted by the Reporter as calling the vote a “critical step for the city to weigh in on what happens to the site in the future.”
“[T]he site is of historic value to San Francisco and the LGBTQ rights movement across the world and it should be appropriately recognized and preserved,” he said.
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