Donny's Place (historic)

Donny's Place, on Herron Avenue in Polish Hill, was for nearly fifty years a beating heart of gay Pittsburgh. Opened in 1973 as the Norreh Social Club and renamed for owner Donald Thinnes in 1991, it ran until 2022 as the city's longest-lived gay bar and a crucial hub of HIV/AIDS-era organizing and outreach. In 2025 it was put forward as Western Pennsylvania's first LGBTQ-specific historic landmark. The venue itself is closed, but its legacy remains central to the city's queer history.