The Pittsburgh City Planning Commission on March 25 voted unanimously to not recommend the former Donny’s Place for designation as a City of Pittsburgh historic site. The negative vote came three weeks after the Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission (HRC) voted to make no recommendation to the Pittsburgh City Council.
Donny’s Place was owned by Donald Thinnes, who died in 2024. The Planning Commission vote could end the bid to create Western Pennsylvania’s first LGBTQ historic landmark.
The hearing was the second in a three-part process that properties go through in the city’s historic designation procedure. The Historic Review Commission first evaluates nominations to determine if they meet one or more of the city’s 10 criteria for designation as a city historic site or historic district. The Planning Commission weighs the HRC’s recommendation and evaluates the nomination based on neighborhood and citywide planning objectives.
Pittsburgh City Council is the final stop in the process. Councilors take into account the HRC and Planning Commission results and then vote whether or not to designate properties. A vote to designate a property historic becomes law, and any changes to the exterior of a designated property become subject to HRC review. It also becomes very difficult to demolish a property once it’s designated historic.
The HRC’s failure to make a recommendation weighed heavily on Planning Commission members. “The Historic Review Commission really guides a lot of my decisions on this, and they were split here,” said Commissioner Rachel O’Neill.
The Planning Commission acknowledged Thinnes’s stature in the LGBTQ community and all of the events that took place at the bar, but they couldn’t get beyond the building’s condition — a December 2024 fire gutted the interior — and Thinnes’s desire to sell the property to Laurel Communities for new housing.
Ahead of the Planning Commission hearing, Harrison Apple, a Carnegie Mellon University historian and founder of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, found the HRC’s actions curious. “I was most struck by the council’s failure to vote,” Apple said. “I thought that was a surprise, that they decided not to decide.”
Apple is an authority on Pittsburgh queer cultural history. They wrote a 2021 University of Arizona Ph.D. dissertation on the history of Pittsburgh’s gay nightlife. Apple’s 258-page study discusses Thinnes and Donny’s Place, along with many other bars. Apple’s work documented landmark bars that have closed (Pegasus, the Holiday Bar, and the Traveler’s Club) and others such as Donny’s Place and Lucky’s in the Strip District that were still open during Apple’s research.
“It was striking to hear one of the council members say [that] maybe, if the nominators could show us more of a complete history of these kinds of institutions around the city, that we would have a different point of view,” Apple says.
Apple’s dissertation is available online from the University of Arizona website. “I am surprised that they were wholly unaware that there is a book length dissertation available about the specific role of after-hours social clubs used by Danny himself, among many others,” Apple says. “That is a shame because that’s an easy one. Someone already did it.”
Neither the Donny’s Place nomination nor the city’s historic preservation staff reports provided to the HRC cited Apple’s survey of Pittsburgh gay bars and their history.
After a report by preservation planner Sarah Quinn, Lizzie Anderson, Matt Cotter, and Dade Lemanski described how preserving Donny’s Place is consistent with the city’s planning objectives. Anderson and Cotter submitted the nomination last year, and Lemanski did the research.
“I looked at the various plans from the neighborhood and from the city that we think help support our motion to save Donny’s Place,” Anderson said via Zoom. She quoted several studies, including the 2011 Polish Hill Community Plan and the City of Pittsburgh Neighborhood Plan Guide.
Seven people testified via Zoom in support of the nomination. They included Dan Yablonsky on behalf of Pittsburghers for Public Transit, Melissa McSwigan of Preservation Pittsburgh, Councilor Deb Gross’s chief of staff, James Murray.
“Donny’s Place is a key part of not just LGBTQ-plus, but of Pittsburgh history,” Murray said as he conveyed Gross’s support for the nomination.
Attorney Jon Kamin, who represents the Thinnes estate and developer Laurel Communities, presented the Planning Commission with a 57-page document that included a report by structural engineer Louis L. Gambogi, photos showing the fire-damaged interior of the former Donny’s Place bar, a copy of Thinnes’s will, and a complaint filed in Allegheny County court alleging Anderson and Cotter were unlawfully trying to block the Laurel Communities development.
“The building is in an extremely deplorable condition,” Gambogi wrote. “It is highly recommended that the entire structure be demolished.”
Kamin, who appeared via Zoom, then called five witnesses who oppose designation. Some, like former bar owner Chuck Honse, writer Billy Hileman, and Thinnes executor Tom Yargo knew Thinnes as a friend and colleague.
Preservation architect Jerry Morosco gave his professional opinion that the building doesn’t meet any of the city’s criteria for designation. Morosco identified himself as a member of the LGBTQ community and he said that he had patronized Donny’s Place in the 1980s and ’90s. He said there was nothing special about the building’s architecture.
“It’s a ubiquitous commercial building from the early 20th century,” Morosco said. He criticized the nominators for abusing Pittsburgh’s historic preservation law. “I think there have been too many instances in which groups have seized upon this ordinance as a tool to improperly try to kill a project,” Morosco said.
Commissioner Phillip Wu suggested that the best way to commemorate the bar and Thinnes would be through a historical marker or interpretive sign.
O’Neill agreed. “It’s clear there’s a lot of history of this site and that probably deserves a respectful and meaningful recognition of its historic significance,” she said just before the commission voted to not recommend designation. “That’s much more likely to be accomplished through a historic marker or other sort of exhibit than designation for a building that has been through the fire.”
Anderson was disappointed by the outcome. “That’s my word of the day, disappointed and deflated,” Anderson said after the hearing ended. Anderson explained that she expected more debate by the commissioners about how preserving Donny’s Place is consistent with the city’s planning objectives.
“I would have really liked to have heard more from the commissioners,” Anderson says. “It was kind of shocking that they had almost nothing to say. It seemed like they really were focused on a couple of things, and one is that fire that happened.”
Pittsburgh’s historic preservation law gives the City Council 120 days from the Planning Commission vote to hold a hearing on the nomination. Because the HRC declined to make a recommendation and the Planning Commission voted to not recommend designating the property, the City Council can treat the advisory boards’ actions as a default denial.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.
