Historic preservation is where history goes to die. One of its graves can be found in Pittsburgh’s Strip District which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2014, with a period of significance from 1850-1964.

It’s as if all history ends with the 50-year criterion and consultants can’t see Criteria Consideration G properties or traditional cultural properties (TCPs) right in front of their faces. Like many industrial districts throughout the world, Pittsburgh’s Strip District changed (technology, economics) and nightclubs, restaurants, artists, etc. began moving in. Some of these changes can rightly be called gentrification. Low rents, cool buildings, and a certain vibe attracted entertainment entrepreneurs in the 1980s-1990s. LGBTQ culture developed a strong foothold there, with bars like Cruze on Smallman Street. The bar closed in 2019, displaced by development (there’s now a parking deck at the site). The only evidence of Cruze in the National Register nomination are a couple of Smallman Street streetscape photos that captured the bar’s facade.

The Real Luck Cafe (Luck’s) is another gay bar whose building is a contributing property to the Strip Historic District. Its history is similarly erased in the National Register nomination. Readers looking for the landmark bar’s history will only find a couple of sentences describing the building’s exterior and a mention of the jeweler who owned the building between 1869 and 1890. For a more complete understand of the bar and its cultural context, folks are better off exploring the work of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, especially the 2014 “Lucky After Dark” exhibition that debuted the same year that the Strip Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Another good source would be Dr. Harrison Apple’s 2021 University of Arizona PhD dissertation, “A Social Member in Good Standing: Pittsburgh’s Gay After-Hours Social Clubs, 1960-1990.”

© 2022 D.S. Rotenstein

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