Henry Gerber House

About

The Henry Gerber House is located on North Crilly Court in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is a single-family brick row house built in 1885 in the Queen Anne style, mostly intact from that time. In the 1920s it housed the apartment occupied by German-born Henry Gerber, founder of the short-lived Society for Human Rights, which was incorporated in Illinois as the first American organization working for gay rights. Inspired by nascent gay-rights organizations he had seen in Germany, Gerber held meetings here and published newsletters, the first known gay civil rights periodicals in the country, for a year until the Chicago police raided the house in 1925.

The Gerber House was recognized as a contributing property to the Old Town Triangle Chicago Landmark District when that was established by the city in 1977, and then when it was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The building was designated a Chicago Landmark in 2001.