Two black-and-white photos of buildings have been Xeroxed side by side, with a typewriter-style caption underneath listing the three names of the architects. I frown. I had hoped that the right answer would jump out at us the moment we found it. That I would naturally know just from looking what the next step should be. I pass the sheet over to Julia so she can copy down the names.
“I’ve got the architect for the Court of Pacifica,” Gabriel adds a few minutes later.
We make a master list of all buildings on the island, with Julia taking notes on every name attached. Three architects. Then four. Then seven. My stomach starts to sink. The only strategy I can think of is to research the hell out of every individual name we find. But what if, by the end of the day, we have twenty architects on the list? What if we have fifty? Our breakthrough clue is starting to look more like broken glass, with the cracks in my plan spider-webbing out farther and farther.
Then, with only twenty minutes left in our appointment, Julia finds an article that changes everything.
“Um…guys?”
I look up from an ancient parking citation issued in the 1950s. “Another building architect?” I ask absently.
“No,” Julia says. She’s blinking over and over, her eyes scanning back and forth across a clipped newspaper article. She runs a gloved finger over the title. “Listen to this heading: ‘The Lost Boys of Treasure Island: How Discharged Naval Sailors Built a Homosexual Hub in San Francisco.’ ”
Immediately, we abandon our stacks and crowd in next to Julia.
“What does the article say?” I ask.
Julia adjusts her glasses. “Well, we knew that Treasure Island was a naval base for World WarII, right? It turns out that, afterward, in the late 1940s and ’50s, sailors from all over the country—if they either came out or were discovered as gay—got sent here.”
Gabriel scoffs. “That was the navy’s genius plan to squash homosexuality? To round up all the gays together?”
“Why did they send them here?” Sunny asks.
Julia points farther down the page. “Treasure Island was a port,” she says. “They didn’t make the sailors stick around or anything; this was just where they were told they were getting kicked out of the navy. But tons of sailors stayed behind. They started living in the same neighborhoods in San Francisco, going to the same shops and stuff. They went from a bunch of scattered individuals to a group, a community.”
I catch one of the final lines of the article and read it out loud: “In many ways, Treasure Island laid the foundation for the beginning of gay culture in America.”
I pause. I’d never really thought about why San Francisco has such a rich history in the queer community. It’s always kind of been a chicken-or-egg scenario in my head. Did gay people come here because San Francisco was so accepting, or was San Francisco so accepting because so many gay people came here?
According to this article…the gay communitymadeSan Francisco accepting. They forged their own home here, together.
“Ooh!” Sunny stands and points a finger into the air. She holds up another article. “Harvey Milk used to be in the navy!”
“I thought you said he didn’t do anything on Treasure Island,” I say.
Sunny shrugs. “He didn’t. He served before he ever moved to San Francisco. But now naming a naval ship after him makes sense.”
I pull Julia’s notebook toward me. “Okay, we can put this all together. I still think we’re looking for an architect. But if Harvey is the key to this puzzle, then we should be looking for an architect of anavalbuilding on Treasure Island, yeah? Any idea which one that could be?”
Gabriel raises his hand. “I think I have the answer to that.”
He reads a caption from a large eight-by-ten photograph in front of him. “Administration Building, also called Building1, was the primary headquarters of the command naval base in San Francisco. In World WarII, the building was known as Naval Station Treasure Island.”
“Any architects listed for that building?” I ask tentatively.
“Two names,” Gabriel says. He flips through a couple more photos, then stops, frozen in place. He turns to the Naval Station photo again, then back to a new mystery photo.
“No freaking way,” he whispers.
“What?” I say, leaning over now. “What is it?”
Gabriel blinks and looks at the rest of us. “I’m pretty sure the second architect on the naval building is our guy.” He holds up the photo, covering the front dramatically with his giant gloved hand. Underneath, we see a single name scrawled across in delicate script.
George W. Kelham.
“Okay…” I’m already confused. This is just anothername, exactly like all the ones already on Julia’s list. “Why this architect? Was he gay or something?”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel says. “But Idoknow that he happened to design another really important building in San Francisco. One that fits our clue perfectly.”
