The Q Archives is a living, breathing digital portal to Pittsburgh’s rich LGBTQ history, finally available to the public, any time, anywhere. This groundbreaking project, a preservation initiative by QBurgh, brings decades of queer publications and photographs out of storage and onto your screen, where they belong.
Right now, visitors can explore a growing collection of iconic LGBTQ newspapers and magazines dating back to the early 1970s. These include Pittsburgh Gay News (1973), Gay Life Pittsburgh (1977), and Pittsburgh’s Out (1979–2012), thanks to the generous donation of over 500 issues from Tony and Ed Molnar-Strejcek. What was once locked away in 30 boxes and tubs is becoming a dynamic, searchable archive for researchers, community members, and anyone who craves connection to Pittsburgh’s queer roots.
The Q Archives are packed with vivid, powerful photographs from landmark moments in LGBTQ Pittsburgh history. From the March on Washington and the earliest Pride celebrations, to legendary venues like Pegasus, Auntie Mame’s, and the Holiday, the archive also showcases pageants like Miss Pittsburgh and Mr. Pittsburgh Leather, the Steel City Softball League, and snapshots of drag royalty, grassroots organizing, and chosen family in full bloom.
The Q Archives now lives on the QBurgh website as an open, user-friendly portal. You don’t need academic credentials or insider access to explore it. You just need Wi-Fi and curiosity.
Our GoFundMe campaign is live and raising funds for equipment, web development, climate-controlled storage, and the human labor it takes to continue scanning, labeling, and honoring each piece with the care it deserves.
When fully digitized, the Q Archives will be the most comprehensive and accessible exhibition of Pittsburgh’s queer history. Every contribution helps us bring our past into the present and make sure it’s never forgotten again.
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A note from our Archivist, Silas Maxwell Switzer
I have been working with various parts of the Q Archives collection for a little over
two years now. Mostly digitizing photographs for eventual publication in the archive. In
those photographs, I caught glimpses. Bits and pieces of lives lived, places that used to
exist that are either empty, utterly changed, or simply gone. There have been small
stories that I’ve been able to put together, like that of Patti O’Fernicher, who was a drag
queen back in the day. But nothing I’ve done thus far has been like assembling and
reading through these old issues of OUT.
I always find myself struck by impermanence. As I went through these issues, I
saw bars and restaurants come and go, close and reopen, and again I found myself
catching glimpses. I started to understand timelines, like that of Danny’s, which
evidently closed at some point, had a reopening, and then had a reopening anniversary
party one year later. There were a lot of places like that. Places that I would see around
in ads for a year or three before they simply disappeared. The record of them exists –
sometimes exclusively – in these ads in these papers.
I giggled at certain ads posted in the “Meet Market” section of the paper, with
people seeking everything from a casual and vanilla relationship to just about the
craziest things you can imagine. It’s funny how some things don’t necessarily change.
They just take a new form. To me, the “Meet Market” looked just like a series of Grindr bios.
We have always had certain, particular ways of communicating that look nothing like
what the cisgender, heterosexual world would come to expect. It was in these ways that
I saw myself in my predecessors.
One of the most difficult things about being a young queer person right now – at
least in Pittsburgh – is that we have very little access to our own history. We can catch
some of it. In glimpses. In the fine print of an ad. In a familiar face in a photograph. In a
story. If there’s one thing that I will hold onto, it’s the knowledge that our community will
always find ways to communicate and to endure.
Next Steps
– Continue assembling ‘Pittsburgh Gay News’ scans.
– Continue scanning ‘Pittsburgh’s Out’ issues.
– Continue scanning photographs and assembling galleries.
– Begin integrating individual articles into Q Archives.
– Collect donations of missing issues and publications.
