An Upstate Commune’s Place in LGBTQ History

When people think about LGBTQ history, places like Greenwich Village and events like the Stonewall Uprising often come to mind. But another chapter of that story unfolded far from New York City, on a rural property in upstate New York where a group of activists sought to build a different kind of community.

Known as Lavender Hill, the communal living experiment emerged from the gay liberation movement of the early 1970s. The site was added to the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places in late 2024 and the National Register in early 2025, recognizing its significance in LGBTQ history.

“It was fascinating that here we have a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual people who actually start off in New York City and are experimenting with communal living in the Catskills and in Staten Island,” said Jeff Iovannone, Historic Preservation Program Analyst, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. “Ultimately, they decide that they want to leave New York and purchase land in rural upstate New York, which is the reverse of the story that we typically get.”

The community’s roots trace back to a collective known as the 25 to 6 Baking and Trucking Society. Like many groups influenced by the counterculture and back-to-the-land movements of the 1960s and 1970s, its members experimented with alternative ways of living. But for LGBTQ people, those experiments carried additional meaning.

“They were creating families of choice as opposed to biological families,” Iovannone said, describing how communal living offered a space where gay and lesbian people could build support networks and explore new social structures.

Unlike many communes of the era, Lavender Hill endured for decades. Iovannone attributes that longevity in part to the group’s strong core membership, developed through earlier communal experiments in the Catskills and Staten Island before members relocated to an 80-acre property in rural Tompkins County.

Lavender Hill also stood out because it was a mixed-gender commune with a strong feminist influence. One of the commune’s central figures was Larry Mitchell, a professor at Richmond College on Staten Island whose approach to gay liberation was heavily influenced by feminist ideas.

“That’s another extraordinary aspect of the history,” Iovannone said. While gay men and lesbians often organized separately during the period, members of Lavender Hill embraced a philosophy that challenged traditional gender roles and divisions of labor.

The community’s physical layout also helped sustain it. Members shared a main house while maintaining space for privacy, with some eventually building smaller structures on the property. Over time, residents moved back and forth between the commune, New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area, while maintaining ties to the community.

Some members also contributed to the influential Moosewood Restaurant Collective, extending Lavender Hill’s cultural influence beyond the commune itself.

Documenting that history required extensive research. Iovannone said surviving members provided access to personal photographs, writings and other materials. Additional records came from Larry Mitchell’s papers, archived at Cornell University, as well as oral history interviews conducted during the nomination process.

“The living members were incredibly generous and gave me access to a lot of their personal materials,” he said.

Today, Lavender Hill no longer functions as a commune in the traditional sense. But Iovannone believes its legacy remains relevant.

“I think this is a story that people especially need right now,” he said. “This finding chosen family, finding where you belong, creating a vision that allows you to sustain yourself and other people.”

Image: Lavender Hill main house, 1974. The Lavender Hill Commune was listed in the New York State Register of Historic Places on December 5, 2024, and in the National Register of Historic Places on February 3, 2025. (New York State Parks & Historic Sites)