The building that formerly housed Donny’s Place doesn’t look like much. It never really did: just a flat-roofed, red-brick two-story structure, built around 1919, with a couple of equally utilitarian one-story additions tacked on since.
But as the Polish Hill neighbors who nominated the structure for city historic designation argue, looks can be deceiving. It’s not architectural splendor they’re banking on, but rather the cultural significance of what took place inside and on the grounds of Pittsburgh’s longest-serving gay bar.
Donny’s, which began life as the Norreh Social Club, operated from 1973 until its final closure, in 2022. According to the historic nomination filed last year, for a half-century it was “an anchor of Pittsburgh gay life.”
“In 50 years, most gay people seeking community in this town kind of touched Donny’s in some way,” said Dade Lemanski, the writer and historian who wrote the nomination on behalf of nominators Lizzie Anderson and Matthew Cotter. “In half a century, that’s so much history, from just after Stonewall until like after kind of the peak of COVID.”
The nomination goes before the city’s Historic Review Commission Wed., Feb. 5.
Nominators seek to honor the legacy of the bar and its owner, the late Donald R. Thinnes — and also prevent the structure’s possible demolition as part of a proposed housing development on the site, just above the railroad tracks at the base of Herron Avenue.
If ultimately approved by Pittsburgh City Council, the historic designation would be the first in the region for a site explicitly because of its role in LGBTQ+ history. (Honors for prominent queer Pittsburgh natives including Andy Warhol and Gertrude Stein have been bestowed chiefly for their contributions to the arts.)
With many former LGBTQ bars and other sites in the area vanishing, says Anderson, “We don’t want this one to go away without a proper honoring, and without seeing what could come that would continue on, especially in the climate that we’re in now.”
“Herron” spelled backward
Thinnes, a Bloomfield native and Vietnam veteran, learned the bar trade under the tutelage of Robert “Lucky” Johns, widely regarded as the first out gay man to own a gay bar in Pittsburgh, and as the godfather of contemporary queer nightlife here.
Thinnes worked as a janitor and doorman for Johns at fabled bars like Downtown’s House of Tilden and Oakland’s The Holiday before obtaining the liquor license of the Norreh, a former Polish after-hours club. “Norreh” was simply “Herron” spelled backward.
Under Thinnes, the Norreh operated in the same membership-based way as under the previous proprietors. Lemanski said most gay establishments functioned in that fashion back then, just after New York City’s epochal Stonewall uprising, when police raids on gay bars were common and the threat of homophobic violence very real.
“The special sort of legal relationship with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board meant there was a lot more privacy for gay people in that era [when] most bars and clubs wouldn’t even serve you,” said Lemanski, who interviewed Thinnes and patronized the bar in its later years.
“A safe space for us”
The Norreh and Donny’s drew generations of LGBTQ folks. Though known as more of a “cruising” establishment than a dance club, it hosted its share dance events over the years, including country music events and lesbian dance nights. There were also drag shows, fundraisers, memorials, spaghetti dinners, picnics in the spacious parking lot and more.
Lemanski said that Thinnes was also “a major community organizer” who played key roles in the creation of such major LGBTQ civic organizations as the Lambda Foundation, PERSAD and the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force. He was also a founding member of the Pittsburgh Tavern Guild, an advocacy organization for gay bar and nightclub owners.
The Norreh — it was renamed Donny’s Place around 1990, when it switched to a standard liquor license — was also an important early recruitment site for the pioneering Pitt Men’s Study. The Men’s Study, federally funded and based at the University of Pittsburgh, was an early effort to track and stem the spread of HIV/AIDS, which began to devastate the gay community in the ’80s.
“The study … used the connections in the bars to access people who might not otherwise be aware of or willing to participate in a Pitt medical study,” said Lemanski. “They printed these beautiful little bar napkins with information about the study, but also information about HIV/AIDS, how it’s spread, what the risks are, how to lower risk, how to prevent the spread.”
“Donny’s Place also served as a really major site of information-sharing in kind of the early days of HIV/AIDS, when information was hard to come by and stigma was really high,” he added.
Thinnes offered free drinks to patrons who volunteered for the study, just as he’d later offer non-alcoholic beverages to designated drivers.
Patrons from this era say it continued to be a social refuge for queer people.
“The rest of society really didn’t want to see us, so we kind of had our own spaces in the world. It centered around the bar scene pretty much,” said Fred Mergner, who’d take advantage of the Norreh’s late hours after his own bartending shift at a Downtown dance club. “It was kind of an enclosed society where we all knew each other … it was a safe space for us. It was a place where you could easily make friends. It was a good thing.”
Donny’s had its own subcultures, Lemanski said. The first floor was a basic bar, complete with drink specials. The second floor often hosted women’s events. And the basement was the heavy pickup area. For a while, Donny’s was also known as “Leather Central,” in the days when it anchored Pittsburgh’s nationally known leather scene, including leather pageants.
Proposed housing
In the late 2010s, a few years before Donny’s official final closure, Thinnes entered into an agreement with large, Pittsburgh-based developer Laurel Communities to construct 30 market-rate townhouses on the three acres that included his bar and several other parcels of land.
Laurel, whose resume includes townhouse developments in the Strip District, Lawrenceville and Peters and Ross townships, announced the project in 2019 and it drew immediate community opposition. The Polish Hill Civic Association sued Laurel Communities and the city’s Zoning Board over it.
The Polish Hill Civic Association today says it is open to development on the site that includes affordable housing and is sensitive to other community needs. Neighbors have objected to Laurel Communities’ proposal over concerns including gentrification, infrastructure and the safety of the steep hillsides on the property.
The project has been revised to include 18 townhouses, but its future is unclear. A message to Laurel Communities was not returned by press time.
Thinnes’ estate still owns the property, and Anderson and Cotter filed the historic nomination without its involvement. Messages to the estate’s executor were not returned by press time.
'A historically significant person'
Thinnes died in January 2024, and there is no record of him discussing the housing development publicly. Nor is it known for sure what he would have thought of the historic nomination for the bar that bore his name, which was filed months after his death.
Harrison Apple, a longtime historian of LGBTQ nightlife in Pittsburgh, interviewed Thinnes in the years before his death.
“He, without a doubt, understood himself as a historically significant person. And he thought of his bar as a historically significant place,” said Apple, adding, “That does not mean that he would have supported very specifically the process available for a, you know, city of Pittsburgh historic nomination.
Starting in 2018, Thinnes donated 35 boxes of papers and memorabilia from Donny’s to the Heinz History Center.
“It's a real window into life through these few decades in the community,” said History Center director of library and archives Matt Strauss. “[Thinnes] understood the importance of it. And he was wanting other people to understand that history.”
Strauss said the Center is still cataloguing the material, which is unique in its archive as a look at LGBTQ life here. “It really speaks to his importance as a kind of a pillar in the community,” said Strauss of the trove.
While property owners must be notified of historic nominations, an historic designation — which limits how the building can be altered — does not require an owner’s consent. It would not be unusual for an owner to object to such a nomination sometime during the process.
Historic nominators, meanwhile, aren’t required to have a plan for preserving or redeveloping a site. Donny’s nominators, Anderson and Cotter, say affordable housing for queer elders would be a great tribute. However, they say there are many possibilities for the site if historic designation is won.
“What’s most important is by preserving this history we can really look towards the future,” Cotter said. “And that’s really what we want to focus on.”