The inaugural class of the Pittsburgh Walk of Fame has been announced, honoring ten trailblazing individuals with ties to Southwestern Pennsylvania whose contributions have shaped American culture. Set to be unveiled in a public ceremony on October 20 at the Strip District Terminal, the Walk of Fame will feature bronze stars embedded along Smallman Street, paying tribute to iconic figures such as playwright August Wilson, pediatrician Jonas Salk, children’s television host Fred Rogers, and Pittsburgh’s own pop art pioneer, Andy Warhol.
The Pittsburgh Walk of Fame will celebrate the ten inaugural inductees whose contributions shaped the national landscape. Among them, nestled between industrial giants, cultural legends, and humanitarian icons, is Warhol: the artist who turned soup cans into sacred objects, queerness into canvas, and The Factory into a revolution.
Andy Warhol belongs to Pittsburgh. Not just as a native son, but as a queer visionary who exploded the boundaries of art, celebrity, and culture, leaving an indelible mark on the world.
Born Andrew Warhola in Oakland in 1928, Warhol’s roots run deep in Pittsburgh. He took art classes at the Carnegie Museum as a child, graduated from Schenley High School, and studied commercial art at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. But it wasn’t just Pittsburgh that shaped Warhol. Warhol helped shape Pittsburgh’s identity too, even if the city has at times dragged its feet in realizing it.
To walk over Andy Warhol’s star on Smallman Street is to step into a different kind of history, one that’s glam, defiant, and radically queer.
Warhol didn’t just paint Campbell’s soup cans or Marilyn Monroe. He redefined art by embracing consumerism while critiquing it, elevating the ordinary, and flattening the hierarchy between fine art and mass media. He was unapologetically weird, undeniably brilliant, and undeniably gay, even if mainstream institutions often downplayed that part of his identity.
But the queerness was never a footnote. It was the medium and the message.
From the hyper-stylized drag portraits he photographed and painted, to his obsessive play with fame and gender performance, to the openly queer ecosystem of collaborators he cultivated at The Factory, Warhol helped carve out a space in American culture where queerness could be visible, desirable, and powerful.
So what does it mean for Pittsburgh, a city once rooted in steel and now forging a more inclusive identity, to enshrine Warhol in its newest public monument?
It means reclamation. It means pride. It means inviting both locals and tourists to reckon with the full spectrum of Pittsburgh’s cultural legacy: the industrial, the artistic, the queer.
Nancy Polinsky Johnson, the force behind the Walk of Fame, said the goal is to honor those with Pittsburgh ties whose impact ripples across the nation. Warhol more than qualifies. His work continues to influence artists, designers, activists, and drag queens alike. His museum, right here on the North Shore, is the largest in the world dedicated to a single artist.
While Michael Keaton will be attending the ribbon-cutting in person, it’s Warhol’s ghost we’ll feel most.
The full list of inaugural inductees is: George Benson, Nellie Bly, Andrew Carnegie, Rachel Carson, Roberto Clemente, Michael Keaton, Fred Rogers, Jonas Salk, Andy Warhol, and August Wilson.
Editor’s note: QBurgh contributors were among the 100-member selection committee that narrowed the list of nominations from the public. The Walk of Fame board made final selections.
