MSW alumni Matthew Cotter and Lizzie Anderson as well as a group of LGBTQ community activists and Polish Hill residents have nominated the former Donny’s Place bar on Herron Avenue for recognition as the first historic landmark in Western Pennsylvania designated specifically for ties to LGBTQ history. Between 1973 and 2022, Donny’s Place was a hub for queer culture and an important public health outreach center during the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis, though obstacles remain for the City of Pittsburgh Historic Site designation effort. Read more in Public Source.
An email of support to make Donny's Place a preserved historical landmark is needed from you and your friends and neighbors by Tuesday, February 4th, at noon.
Please send just one email to all five of these email addresses at once: HistoricReview@pittsburghpa.gov, PlanningCommission@pittsburghpa.gov, CityClerksOffice@pittsburghpa.gov, district7@pittsburghpa.gov, donnysplacenomination@gmail.com
It can be short and sweet! Please include why you are supportive, any relevant role or title you hold and what neighborhood/area you live in.
Some of the what, why and how:
- Donny's Place holds decades of history for both the neighborhood of Polish Hill and the broader LGBTQIA+ community.
- If you are a Polish Hill resident, your opinion carries extra value and you have a chance to be supportive of this special place in gay Pittsburgh history.
- This would be the first LGBTQIA+ related historic designation in western PA that we know of.
- Donny's has been nominated by a crew of both neighbors and queer community members, one of which is a historian, after receiving signatures of support on a circulated petition which now has almost 200 signatures! You can still sign it if you haven't and please do.
- Donny's was an important and safe social, political and harm reduction site for decades, including being pivotal in the initial recruitment for the still ongoing Pitt Men's Study at the University of Pittsburgh for HIV/AIDS. As historian Dade Lemanski has said, "For 50 years, whole worlds were happening at Donny's."
- This nomination is just for the actual bar building that is slated to be torn down by Laurel Communities as a part of their plan to build 19 townhouses. If we succeed, the soon to be owners, a wealthy corporation, will be responsible to maintain the building and the history found there.
- We don't know what will come of a success but are having a lot of fun dreaming together - museum, housing for queer and trans elders, community center focused on harm reduction, social services, etc. You're invited into this process of dreaming with us.
- We do know that what could be achieved by winning is much better than what we will lose if we don't: another torn down landmark where magic happened made into expensive, gentrifying homes.
- Donny's is a part of a larger network of gay bars that have perished without a proper honoring. Gay and lesbian bars are being lost all over the country: in the 1980s, there were around 200 lesbian bars, and only 28 by 2023; more than 45% of gay bars closed between 2002 and 2023.
- If you want to learn more you can watch the video of the Development Activities Meeting (attached are the interesting slides from that meeting), and see press from WESA, Qburgh, and Trib Live.