Co-Directed by Harrison Apple and Tim Haggerty, Director of the Humanities Scholars Program at Carnegie Mellon University, the Project has been able to secure funding for exhibitions and public events in which stories are told, and home archival methods are taught.
With well over 12,000 images in our growing archives, the PQHP seeks to maintain a rich visual record of these communities. Working to preserve and recirculate these histories, the PQHP has collected interviews and artifacts from owners, employees, and customers.
In the years following heavy outmigration from steel cities like Pittsburgh, these histories have become all but forgotten. These emergent communities of membership formed the basis of a self-aware gay and lesbian community which combatted police harassment and the AIDS epidemic while facing the swift economic decline of Pittsburgh. Within these nightclubs, LGBT Pittsburghers used fraternal organization charters as semi-legal shelters and created an after-dark community of labor and love. Founded by Harrison Apple in 2012, the project began as an investigation of gay-owned-and-operated after-hours nightclubs. The Pittsburgh Queer History Project (PQHP) is an oral history and media archive, focusing on LGBT nightlife in Pittsburgh, PA from 1960 to 1990. CLICK HERE TO REQUEST A COPY OF THE PQHP MAGAZINE – AS SEEN IN PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER!