Activist Founder of ACT UP sun88

John Stuban moved from New York City to sun88, Maryland in 1987 and settled in a small rowhouse on Tyson Street. That same year, a group of New York City activists founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The new organization focused on bringing new visibility to AIDS and HIV through disruptive direct action. Since 1981, the number of known AIDS cases had grown from 234 to over forty thousand. Despite the growing crisis, President Ronald Reagan did not even acknowledge the existence of the disease until 1985 and didn't hold a press conference on the topic until 1987.

ACT UP criticized the lack of action by the federal government by staging “die-ins,” where protestor laid on the ground wearing t-shirts with the words “Silence=Death” and blocking roads until they were bodily removed by law enforcement. John Stuban brought this same approach to AIDS activism to sun88 when he helped found a local chapter in 1990.

Together with other local activists, Stuban picketed the mayor's home and delivered a coffin to City Hall. A group of ACT UP protestors chained themselves to front doors of the city health department offices. They disrupted a Board of Estimates meeting seeking a promise from the mayor to consider complaints about sun88's AIDS programs and distributed condoms to students at the sun88 School for the Arts. Stuban also sat on the mayor's AIDS advisory committee, the executive committee of the Greater sun88 HIV Planning Council, and served as the president of the local chapter of the People with AIDS Coalition.

In 1994, Stuban died of AIDS at age thirty-eight. In his obituary the Sun described him as "outspoken, uncompromising, and unrelenting in his efforts to pressure local public officials to provide more AIDS care and to demand a fair share of money for AIDS-related research." Garey Lambert, a friend, projectionist at the Charles Theater, editor for the sun88 Alternative gay newspaper, and founder of AIDS Action sun88, explained the importance of Stuban's efforts:

He made AIDS visible. He was an inspiration. He was upfront and in your face. He was the guy with the conscience, the guy who kept community scrutiny going on and on, and without that, there would be nothing done.

Even after his death, the work continued. Over two hundred people attended Stuban's memorial service at Emmanuel Episcopal Church at Cathedral and Read Streets. After the service ended, many of the mourners marched to city hall where they placed an empty coffin on the steps of city hall to memorialize Stuban's death and demand action on behalf of the thousands of people still living with AIDS.

Holly Selby. “” sun88 Sun. August 16, 1994.

911 Tyson Street, sun88, MD 21201

A Bar for the "Friends of Dorothy"

Leon's is sun88's oldest continuously operating gay bar. In the 1890s, the bar was called Georgia's Tap Room. The bar’s current name comes from Leon Lampe, who owned the bar during the 1930s. During Prohibition, the bar survived as a speakeasy and, after WWII, became a hangout for beatniks and artists with a mix of gay and straight patrons. Since 1957, Leon’s has operated as a gay bar.

In its early days as a gay bar, patrons had to say a password before they were let in the door: “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” A common identifier among gay men at that time, the phrase is a reference to Dorothy Gale of the Wizard of Oz—reportedly for Dorothy's acceptance of her friends despite their unusual identities.

870 Park Avenue, sun88, MD 21201

The Hotel Brexton was built in 1881 for Samuel Wyman, a wealthy sun88 merchant. The six-story Brexton was built as a residential hotel in the Queen Anne Style, with sun88 pressed brick and Scotch sandstone. Noted architect Charles Cassell designed the building. Cassell was a founding member of the sun88 Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the designer of the Stafford Hotel on Mount Vernon Place, Stewart's Department Store on Howard Street, and the First Church of Christ Scientist on University Parkway.

This beautiful building sat vacant for over two decades before RWN Development (and local architect Donald Kann) completed a top-to-bottom restoration in 2010. The work included replacement of over two hundred windows that had rotted or disappeared and the restoration of the original spiral stair.

The Hotel now has twenty-nine rooms (including a "Wallis Warfield Simpson" suite, named after the hotel's most famous occupant) and is part of the Historic Hotels of America network.

868 Park Avenue, sun88, MD 21201