UNERASING LGBTQ HISTORY AND IDENTITIES PODCAST SEASON 8 EPISODE 1

Published January 26, 2026

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Deb Fowler: Hello, and welcome to UnErasing LGBTQ History and Identities — A Podcast.  I’m Deb Fowler, co-founder of History UnErased. 

 

Before this episode’s introduction, I want to thank each and every one of our listeners. You are tuning in from thousands of cities around the world. And we would love to hear from you! Email [email protected] and let us know in which country you are listening, or what history we can highlight in a future episode from your corner of the world. That’s [email protected], and thank you so much for listening.

 

You are about to meet Alice Austen. Her story is one of artistic brilliance and rebellion - not an unusual pairing. But her body of work, over 7,000 images, was almost lost to history. The photographs, taken during the turn of the century, offer social commentary on topics that are exceedingly relevant today … Take it away, Kathleen! 

 

Kathleen Barker Imagine it’s September, 1951. You open your mailbox to find the latest issue of LIFE magazine, featuring popular American actress Gene Tierney on the cover. As you flip the pages you discover another beautiful photograph on page 137. It’s a young woman named Alice Austen posed on the front porch of her Staten Island home. Her corseted silhouette suggests the photo was taken in the late nineteenth-century. As you read further, there are lovely photos of women posing with family friends and pets, parlors stuffed with books and curios, and a beautifully landscaped property. But as you explore the photo essay further, the photographs become a bit more risqué for the turn of the century: for example, two young women smoking cigarettes while posing in petticoats! Women wearing pants and riding bicycles! Alice and her friends climbing fences to watch auto races! Who was this Alice Austen, and how did her photographs end up in the pages of LIFE magazine decades after they were taken?

 

Elizabeth Alice Austen was born on March 17, 1866. When she was 3 years old, her father abandoned the family, and she and her mother moved into her grandparents' home, a farmhouse built before 1700 on Staten Island that the family called “Clear Comfort”. The only child in a large family of doting adults, Alice had a great deal of attention and grew up in a life of privilege and wealth. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were wealthy auctioneers, which led to a home full of curios, books, and art. From the front lawn of her home, Alice could watch masted ships sail through New York Harbor, and she even watched the building of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor after it arrived in pieces from France in 1885.

 

This was the Gilded Age–roughly the 1870s-1900- a period of dramatic American transformation marked by rapid industrialization and economic growth that created unprecedented wealth for the few, while most workers—including masses of new immigrants—endured harsh conditions and low wages. Austen’s family was wealthy enough to enjoy the comforts of the time, but not everyone was so lucky. 

 

When Alice was 10, she was given a camera by her Uncle Oswald, a sea captain, and another Uncle who was a Chemistry professor, helped her learn to develop pictures in a small darkroom that they built inside a bedroom closet. Austen was a self taught photographer. She worked hard on composition, and took detailed notes on how to develop each print from the glass plate, observing light, time, aperture and distance until she understood exactly what her camera could do and how to use it to achieve the best results. With her camera, she set out to document her world– over her lifetime she would take more than 7,000 photographs!

 

Austen described her early life on Staten Island as “larky”, a word meaning playful, mischievous, or frolicsome. She was athletic, excelling at tennis and golf, and enjoyed sports like swimming, skating, and bowling. She attended the prestigious Miss Errington’s School for Young Ladies, was a member of a gardening club, a photography club, the Staten Island bicycling club, and she also started cooking clubs and other social clubs of her own. She was even one of the first people on Staten Island to own a car! Her family’s wealth gave her freedom and access to social events with wealthy families such as the Vanderbilts and the Roosevelts. Austen documented many of these larky adventures with her camera.

 

Alice’s first dated self-portrait was taken in 1884. It features Alice seated on a wicker chair on the grounds of Clear Comfort with her dog, Punch, in her lap. Punch, and Austen’s other dog, Chico, made several appearances in Austen's photographs. Her friends were also frequent subjects, whether in formal portraits or in more relaxed and casual moments, like sitting on the beach or playing cards. Of course, Clear Comfort itself was a favorite subject of Austen’s and through her many images we get a detailed sense of the wonderful place in which she lived virtually all of her life. 

 

The secluded picturesque landscape of Clear Comfort provided a space where Austen could experiment with images, not to mention Victorian social norms and gender identity and presentation. For example, a photograph labeled “Trude & I Masked Short Skirts, August 6, 1891,” features Alice and her lifelong friend Trude Eccleston, their long hair unbound, smoking cigarettes in nothing but their undergarments, with half-masks covering their faces. Such photos stand in shocking contrast to the more formal portraits that Alice took of friends and family dressed in more typical female attire of the Gilded Age that featured tight corsets, multiple petticoats, and voluminous floor-length skirts. 

 

These private photos showed close relationships between women and unconventional lifestyles. Her famous pictures of "The Darned Club" show female friends partly dressed, wearing fake mustaches, and posing together in ways that broke Victorian rules about proper behavior. In another pair of striking photographs taken in 1891, Alice and her friends, Julia Martin and Julia Bredt, are dressed in men's clothing and smoking cigars. Alice took two shots of this scene, one with everyone standing, and another with them seated. The seated version captures a very bold pose: Julia Martin with an umbrella positioned between her legs in what was quite a provocative gesture for the time. And maybe even still for our time! 

 

 In addition to capturing images of her larky life with friends and family on Staten Island, Alice turned her camera onto the bigger world, documenting New York City street life, new immigrants, and women. This was no easy task! Cameras were still relatively new in the late nineteenth century. The first camera was invented in 1816, and in 1839, Louis Daguerre introduced the daguerreotype, the first publicly available photographic process. It wouldn’t be until 1888 that Kodak cameras brought film to the masses. Imagine then: Alice Austen carrying 50 pounds of photographic equipment on her bicycle pedaling to the ferry in Staten Island that would take her into Manhattan! Her camera was a wooden box with a lens in front and a holder in back that held a glass plate negative covered with light-sensitive, silver emulsion. Alice began documenting working class neighborhoods with her camera in 1895, photographing tradespeople across New York City. She created over 70 negatives, printed dozens of images, and copyrighted 18 of them, ultimately selecting twelve for a portfolio she titled "Street Types of New York," which she bound between custom cardboard covers. 

 

That same year, 1895, Dr. Alvah H. Doty, the Health Officer for the Port of New York, asked Austen to document New York’s quarantine stations, where countless immigrants arriving by ship underwent health inspections before continuing to Ellis Island's new federal entry station. What started off as a paid commission where Austen received $20 for a set of negatives, soon became a passion that Austen continued to document for 10 more years. 

 

In 1896, on the lawn of Clear Comfort, Austen took photographs for the book “Bicycling for Ladies” written by her friend and bicyclist Maria E. Ward, (her friends called her Violet.) This groundbreaking guide was shocking for its time and revolutionized cycling for women by becoming the first and only hands-on bicycle guide aimed at a female audience. As Victorian conventions crumbled and bicycle enthusiasm swept the nation, Ward empowered women cyclists in an unprecedented way. Her manual boldly urged them to master the mechanical workings of their own bikes because bicycles meant more freedom for women. 

 

Austen's photos of Victorian women's private lives were some of her most important work. She photographed women doing things that were considered shocking at the time: bicycling, smoking, wearing men's clothes, and playing sports like tennis. While this may not shock twenty-first century viewers, we should keep in mind that the idea of women stepping out into the public sphere, not to mention wearing any form of pants, was still relatively controversial. 

 

For example, just a few decades earlier, an article in the New York Daily Times of November 30, 1852, reported that a woman named Emma Snodgrass was repeatedly arrested for wearing pants. "Miss Emma Snodgrass, a young woman of seventeen, belonging to New York, has a second time been taken into custody by the police of Boston for donning the breeches.” 

 

Snodgrass was continually arrested for wearing pants and appeared in newspapers around the country. While en route to California, she was arrested again in Indiana.

 

 "Emma Snodgrass, the girl in pantaloons, who disturbed the equanimity of the sleepy magistracy in the eastern cities, not long since, was last seen at Louisville, on her way to California.  She wears a frock coat, glazed cap, striped pantaloons, &c., and has the appearance of quite a good looking young man.  She is a practical Woman's Rights girl."

 

In the 1850s, Amelia Bloomer, a newspaper editor and temperance advocate, championed a radical new outfit: loose trousers gathered at the ankle, worn under a shortened skirt. While much more practical than women’s attire of the time, women who wore “bloomers” faced public ridicule, harassment on the streets, and accusations of trying to "be men." Decades later, when Alice Austen photographed women in similar attire, she was capturing both athletic liberation and lingering controversy. The battle over what women could wear—and do—in trousers was far from over.

 

When Alice Austen was 31, she and her friend Trude took a summer vacation in the Catskill Mountains, where they met Gertrude Tate, a 26-year-old dance teacher from Brooklyn. Alice and Gertrude reconnected in the Catskills two years later, in the summer of 1899, and fell in love. They would spend the next 55 years together in a relationship, 30 of those years spent living together at Clear Comfort. Alice created several photo albums celebrating their initial meeting, one of which she inscribed to Gertrude: “G.A.T.—Twilight Park—Summer 1897—E.A.A.”

 

It’s not difficult to understand the attraction between Alice and Gertrude. Both had an appreciation for the arts, Austen through her photography, and Tate through dance. Beginning in the 1890s, Gertrude served as an assistant to dance instructor Adeline Robinson, who taught ballroom dance to children of prominent New York families, and held classes in ballrooms of famous Gilded Age restaurants like Delmonico's. Tate studied at the Chalif Normal School of Dancing in Manhattan, founded around 1905 by Russian ballet dancer Louis H. Chalif. There she was trained to teach numerous styles of dance, from folk to ballroom, and by 1908, Tate was teaching her own dance classes for both adults and children. Tate would go on to play a leadership role in the New York Society of Teachers of Dancing, beginning with its founding in 1914.

 

Although Tate continued to live with her family in Brooklyn, she and Austen built a life together at Clear Comfort. Alice was obsessed with cars, which in the early 1900s were essentially handcrafted luxury items. They were fast, they were loud, they were exciting, and they represented this amazing new freedom to go anywhere you wanted at exhilarating speed. Remember that photograph I mentioned earlier, the one of Alice climbing fences to watch automobile races? That image was taken by one of her friends in 1908. Alice had literally climbed a fence to get the perfect shot of speeding automobiles below. She was that excited about cars. Sometime after 1910, Austen bought her own car, an Overland, one of the top three American auto manufacturers at the time. This wasn't some practical vehicle for running errands. This was an expensive toy. She used it for what they called "recreational touring”-- travel focused on exploring, adventure, and fun–and she and Gertrude could often be found tooling around New York with their friend Guy Loomis, who was heir to a Brooklyn lumber fortune.

 

The couple also loved to travel abroad. Nearly every year between 1903 and 1912, Alice and Gertrude spent three to four months traveling Europe. They stuck to the typical European grand tour that wealthy Americans of the era loved, visiting picturesque locales in England, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. But they didn't stop there. In 1909 and 1912, they visited Morocco and Scandinavia. Of course, Alice brought a camera, but she switched from using those heavy glass plate negatives to using film, which meant she could pack lighter and take many more photos. She ended up with around 1,200 photographs from these trips. A lot of them are pretty standard tourist shots of famous buildings and scenic landscapes.There are many travel photos, however, that feature Alice and Gertrude enjoying themselves, rowing together in a boat in Scotland or having a picnic in Tangiers. 

 

Gardening was another great hobby of Austen’s. The beautiful landscaping at Clear Comfort is a testament to the Austen family’s interest in gardening. Purple wisteria bloomed across the back of the house, and the gardens featured plants like azaleas, hydrangeas, and hostas. In April 1914, Alice hosted the first meeting of the Staten Island Garden Club at Clear Comfort, and was elected its president. Club meetings were serious endeavors that offered lectures by professional writers, editors, and horticulturalists. 

 

The Garden Club joined forces with the Staten Island Antiquarian Society and, with additional support from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, purchased the Perine House to use as a headquarters. Constructed around 1663, the Perine House is the oldest surviving building on Staten Island, and one of the oldest in all of New York State. The Garden Club held its first meeting there in 1915, and Austen organized teas to help support maintenance of the building. Gertrude would eventually manage the Box Tree Inn, a tearoom in the house that served light lunches, suppers, and of course, tea. 

 

In 1917, Gertrude's mother and younger sister, Winifred, moved to an apartment building. Finally, with permission from Austen’s aunt, Gertrude Tate moved into Clear Comfort. Alice and Gertrude belonged to all the "right" institutions—the Staten Island Country Club, the Garden Club, the Perine House, among many others. They were well-connected, respected members of Staten Island society. That privilege allowed them to live authentically as a lesbian couple without facing too much backlash. Were there probably whispers? Sure. But their social standing protected them in ways that working-class or poor lesbian couples did not have access to. Their age, money, and status bought them the freedom to be themselves.

 

This status also gave them the means to support America’s war effort. When the United States entered World War I in 1918, both women threw themselves into volunteer work. Alice grabbed her camera to document warships passing through New York Harbor, capturing Gertrude on the lawn of Clear Comfort, waving a massive American flag. She also photographed military parades marching through Manhattan. But Alice and Gertrude didn't just document the war effort, they actively participated in it. Alice volunteered to teach motor vehicle driving classes and even drove an ambulance for the Red Cross motor corps. Gertrude was equally involved, teaching classes on surgical dressings for the Red Cross. 

 

In many ways, life continued as it had before Alice and Gertude lived together, but historians have noted that one important thing does change after their cohabitation at Clear Comfort. Alice basically stopped photographing herself with Gertrude. Remember those earlier photos where Alice would set the timer and jump into the frame with her friends? That playful energy seems to disappear. Instead, Alice takes intimate portraits of just Gertrude, alone. With a few exceptions, these are not distant or formal photographs. Instead, they're more like love letters through a lens. Alice was documenting Gertrude's presence in their home, in their life together. There's Gertrude relaxing in a hammock on the piazza. There's Gertrude gazing out at ships passing through the harbor. These are quiet, tender moments, the kind you capture when you're photographing someone you love existing in the space you've built together. 

 

The stock market crash of 1929 devastated Austen's finances. Like many other Americans, Austen believed the economy would recover quickly. She took out mortgages on the family home and refused offers by an oil company and a dry dock company to purchase the property. She began selling family heirlooms to make ends meet, but ultimately, she was unable to pay her mortgage and the bank foreclosed on Clear Comfort in 1934. Several women’s organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, advocated on Austen's behalf until a sympathetic bank officer agreed to allow Austen and Tate to remain in Clear Comfort as caretakers. In the spring of 1944, however, the bank sold Clear Comfort, despite the informal deal with Austen, and the couple was evicted from their home in 1945. Separated by poverty and family rejection of their relationship, Austen spent her final years in the Staten Island Farm Colony, where Tate visited her weekly.

 

Alice Austen's legacy was nearly lost to history. Upon her eviction from Clear Comfort, Loring McMillen, Director of the Staten Island Historical Society, gathered thousands of Austen's prints and negatives for safekeeping. Historian Oliver Jensen discovered her photographs in 1951, and his many publications featuring Austen’s photographs, including the article in LIFE magazine, helped raise funds to move Austen from the Farm Colony to a private nursing home, where she died in 1952 at age 86. She was buried in the Austen family plot at the Moravian Cemetery at New Dorp Staten Island. Gertrude Tate lived until 1962. Upon her death, Gertrude’s sister, Winifred, buried her in the Tate family plot in Brooklyn, and not with Alice in Staten Island, directly contradicting Gertrude’s own wishes. According to Winifred, neither Gertrude's mother nor her other sister Carrie ever openly admitted that Gertrude was a lesbian. 

 

Today, Clear Comfort operates as the Alice Austen House Museum, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993, and recognized as a nationally significant site of LGBTQ history. Austen’s photographs continue to offer an invaluable view into American life at the turn of the century, Victorian women's experiences, and the courage required to live authentically in an unaccepting era. Austen's work stands as a testament to the power of photography to document not only public history but also the intimate lives and connections that society preferred to overlook.

 

DF: Kathleen Barker is History UnErased’s program director and podcast host, and is a library and information specialist and public historian with over 20 years of experience as a museum and library educator. 

This podcast is funded by the New York City Council. It was developed by History UnErased and produced and edited by Dinah Mack, our youth equity program director and podcaster. 

Our theme music is “1986” by BrothaD via Tribe of Noise. 

As I noted at the top, we would love to hear from you! Email [email protected] and let us know where in the world you are listening, or what history we can highlight in a future episode from your corner of the world. That’s [email protected] - and please rate this podcast and share! 

I’m Deb Fowler. Thanks for listening. 

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Sources: 

1. Alice Austen House Museum. "Alice Austen." Alice Austen House Museum, https://aliceausten.org/alice-austen/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.
2. Historic House Trust of New York City. "Alice Austen House." Historic House Trust of New York City, https://historichousetrust.org/houses/alice-austen-house/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.
3. Jensen, Oliver. “Newly discovered picture world of A. Austen.” LIFE Magazine, September 24, 1951, pp. 137-145. 
4. NBC News. "Photographer Alice Austen was the queer star of the Gilded Age." NBC News, 20 Oct. 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/photographer-alice-austen-was-queer-star-gilded-age-rcna23589.
5. U.S. National Park Service. "Alice Austen." National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/people/alice-austen.htm. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.
6. Wikipedia. "Alice Austen." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Austen. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.
7. Yochelson, Bonnie. Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen. New York: Empire State Editions, 2025. 
8. Alice Austen: Early American Photographer — Google Arts & Culture
9. Miss Alice Austen and Staten Island's Gilded Age — The Gotham Center for New York City History
10. A Love Story on Two Wheels: The Life and Legacy of Pioneering Photographer and Bicyclist Alice Austen – The Marginalian
11. Bicycling For Ladies 
12. Tour the house! https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=xBqMj7CfpEe
13. She did it her way NY Times
14. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/emma-snodgrass-arrested-wearing-pants/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1769359849220234&usg=AOvVaw0DbPtD1-mygFJ6aLQe1le8