The Los Angeles LGBT Center’s McDonald/Wright building will be undergoing renovations to create new patient areas, set to reopen in early 2025.
The improvements to the historic building—which now houses the majority of the Center’s health care services—are funded by two capital improvement grants. The project will add four new exam rooms and two lab drawing areas to the building’s first floor to improve access and efficiency in some of the Center’s most-utilized services.
All services, including the Pharmacy on the first floor of McDonald/Wright, will remain available during construction. Full operating hours can be found here.
The McDonald/Wright building on N. Schrader Boulevard holds a significant place in the Center’s history. The building once housed the IRS office where the Center’s founders first applied for nonprofit status in 1971. The IRS denied the application at the time, saying the organization (then known as the Gay Community Services Center) was “neither benevolent nor charitable” because it served homosexuals.
It was nearly three years and multiple appeals later before the Center was finally awarded nonprofit status in 1974 on the condition that it not “advocate the practice of homosexuality” or allow “avowed homosexuals” on its board of directors. The Center accepted the nonprofit status but refused to comply with conditions, which were legally removed a decade later.
In 1989, the Center purchased that very same IRS building, making it the organization’s headquarters for the next several decades. The street that the building sits on was renamed in 1994 in honor of Rand Schrader, a gay rights activist and longtime Center board member who also served as a judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court.Today, McDonald/Wright is home to the Center’s Jeffrey Goodman Special Care Clinic, one of the few Federally Qualified Health Centers with providers who specialize in primary care for the LGBTQ+ community and those living with HIV; the Audre Lorde Health Program, which specializes in providing care for LBTQ+ women; and a full-service Pharmacy. To learn more about the Center’s medical services, click here.
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