From undressed to dressed up: Pittsburgh’s porn palaces are now cultural assets

Pittsburgh’s porn palaces once did double duty as places to view sex films and as arenas where lawyers and moral reformers fought constitutional battles over the First Amendment. But today, infamous places such as the Northside’s Garden Theater and the Harris Theater downtown are touted as redevelopment and rebranding success stories.  Throughout the city’s history, Pittsburgh vice entrepreneurs cultivated districts dedicated to gambling, illegal booze, and sex work. Some of the districts developed colorful nicknames, like the North Side’s “Little Mexico,” which included blocks along Federal Street dubbed “Rum Row.” National Park Service photographer Jack Boucher captured the Garden Theatre in the early 1970s for the Historic American Building Survey. Credit: Courtesy of the Historic American Building Survey/Library of Congress Downtown, “Yellow Row” along Second Avenue was known for its brothels. These were places where law enforcement officers and politicians turned a blind eye in exchange for protection money and other favors. Decades of reform activities and capital infusions scrubbed away the stigma and transformed these places into valuable civic assets. Pittsburgh’s seedy redlight district along Liberty Avenue is now a cultural hotspot anchored by galleries, theaters, and the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. Federal Street now has PNC Park, bars, eateries, and other tourism-related amenities. The city, building, and business owners successfully swapped reputational stigma for redevelopment rewards. The former Garden Theater in the Northside as it appears today Credit: Mars Johnson A deep history Decades before Debbie did Dallas and Deep Throat got theater owners into deep trouble in the 1970s, there were a few places where Pittsburgh residents could catch live shows with lots of exposed skin.  Smutty cinema has been a part of Pittsburgh’s entertainment scene since at least 1930.