Effort to designate Pittsburgh gay bar as historic meets pushback from founder's estate
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A once-popular Pittsburgh bar is one step closer to getting a historic designation after the Historic Review Commission met on Wednesday.
Donny's Place in Polish Hill was the hub of LGBTQ life in the city from 1973 to its closure in 2022. If the designation goes through, it would be the first queer history landmark in western Pennsylvania.
"As we continue to lose the people and places that can tell the stories, we feel Donny's is a good candidate for designation and can inspire other related nominations," said Elizabeth Anderson, who is working to ensure its history is not lost to new development and nominated it for landmark status.
The two-story red brick building at the corner of Herron Avenue in Pittsburgh's Polish Hill neighborhood sits empty, but for decades, it was the go-to spot in the LGBTQ community.
"We have up to 90 emails now of support from our neighbors in Polish Hill and the broader community all sent with care and zeal and hope for what this nomination could mean," Anderson said.
The founder of Donny's Place, Donald Thinnes, a Vietnam veteran, bought the building in 1973 and made it a safe haven for LGBTQ people, even offering life-saving HIV/AIDS testing.
Over the years, the bar had numerous names, including Leather Central. But it was more than a nightclub. It also functioned as a community center, hosting fundraisers, memorials and spaghetti dinners.
Jonathon Kamin, the attorney for the Thinnes' estate, said emphatically that Anderson's efforts contradict the wishes of Thinnes.
"It does not meet any of the criteria that would go ahead and allow it to be designated as historic," Kamin said.
He says Thinnes had entered into a sales agreement with Laurel Communities to demolish the former bar and build townhouses. He calls the decision by the Historic Review Commission to push this through to the next step tragic.
"The memory of this incredibly significant and wonderful person is being used in such a way as to leverage the development that was in an agreement that Donnie signed back in 2019," Kamin said.
Kamin says he filed suit on Wednesday in civil court against Anderson and her co-nominator, Matthew Cotter, for intentionally interfering with a legally binding agreement.
