On April 30, someone stole the bronze sidewalk plaque commemorating the Up Stairs Lounge arson. The crime was caught on video and the New Orleans Police Department has identified the thief and issued an arrest warrant. The perpetrator’s name has not been released and he has not been apprehended.
The plaque had been placed in 2003 on the thirtieth anniversary of the fire. The Up Stairs Lounge occupied the second floor of the building at the corner of Iberville and Chartres streets on the edge of the French Quarter. The fire claimed thirty-two lives and remains the deadliest fire in New Orleans history.
In response to the theft, a community group met for the first time on May 8 to form the Up Stairs Lounge Memorial Plaque Replacement Committee and assess how to move forward. This committee met with the blessing of the original 2003 Up Stairs memorial plaque group, who shared insights about how they got the initial memorial plaque placed following an eight-year struggle from 1995 to 2003.
For more information on the Up Stairs Lounge, click here. https://lgbtarchiveslouisiana.org/the-upstairs-lounge-fire/
Members of the new committee include Lonnie Cheramie, Pastor of MCC of New Orleans; Jimmy Gale, board member of the Crescent City Leathermen; Frank Perez, Executive Director of the LGBT+ Archives Project; Robert W. Fieseler, author of Tinderbox; Ryan Leitner, a queer monument-ology scholar; and trans activist Courtney Sharp, who will represent the 2003 committee. At the initial meeting, committee members discussed inviting several more members from QPOC and BIPOC organizations to join the committee, so as to make sure this effort reflects the diversity of New Orleans and its queer community.
The committee discussed the ongoing police investigation to try to recover the historic plaque, and assessed the need to make name corrections & additions to any newly installed memorial plaque. The new committee voted unanimously to have the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of New Orleans act as the fiscal fiduciary for the plaque replacement/update project.
Ryan Leitner was elected committee chair, given his expertise on queer monuments. The committee agreed that it was important to allow people to start donating to this effort as soon as possible, before and during Pride month, while international sympathy for the plaque theft remains high. The committee voted that money raised should go first towards the creation and installation of a newly updated memorial plaque and then towards a reserve fund (held by the Crescent City Leathermen) for maintenance fees to keep the plaque presentable and safe from vandals in the future, as well as for future commemorations. Donations to help cover the cost of the new plaque may be made here. https://www.eservicepayments.com/cgi-bin/Vanco_ver3.vps?appver3=tYgT1GfNxRUldiimjHMvOQ43yt9fYqgnnIoZwKBOirW1q4qJDDuf89STNCYkcYRM2evTpo0mld6BrVzd2nG0p0DFqXx82BKqCdJwvoK-S_8=&ver=3&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR32DdohkKzBuzmABy4hloYiCxaF7AyZVSMhWOKMcB8pGvOqAvAir00nnk4_aem_AShTKTugwpBu3D-pXe00nO8QmnraMSPC45JY7e2NZzCEGcP1XTM5vRylBBW-Jn3tpxlAW4J1SYhAdG5SF5tjTx6G
The cost of replacing the plaque has not been determined. The committee has obtained a number of estimates and is soliciting more. In addition to the bronze and all the engraving (the names of the thirty-two victims were listed on the plaque), part of the replacement cost will involve redesigning the plaque.
In 2003, the plaque committee wanted to affix the plaque to the building, but the owner refused. Consequently, the plaque was embedded in the sidewalk. Now, however, the current owner is amenable to having the plaque attached to the wall of the building. The names on the stolen plaque were arranged in a triangle, which was sensible for the sidewalk, but the names on the new plaque will be in columns.
Replacing the plaque also provides an opportunity to correct the spelling and grammatical errors that were on the old plaque. Another revision will be the addition of Larry Frost’s name to the list of victims. Frost was originally listed as an “unidentified white male” in the old plaque.
