Philadelphia – Photo: Marc Dufresne via iStockphoto
Philadelphia is extending its reputation as the “City of Brotherly Love” with plans to open one of the nation’s first LGBTQ visitors’ centers.
Slated to open in January 2026, the Philly Pride Visitors Center will debut in the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood of Midtown Village, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“We don’t just welcome diversity — we celebrate it,” said Kathryn Ott Lovell, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation. “Our hope is that the Philly Pride Visitors Center becomes a place where LGBTQ+ visitors feel they belong from the moment they arrive.”
Philadelphia boasts a large LGBTQ population — about 198,000 residents, according to a 2021 Williams Institute brief. Beyond its role as the birthplace of American democracy, the city also has a rich queer history dating back to the early 1900s.
In 1965, Dewey’s Restaurant was the site of multiple sit-ins protesting the diner’s repeated refusal to serve patrons based on their sexual orientation, gender expression, and cultural nonconformity.
After several protesters were arrested for “disorderly conduct” during the first sit-in, a second protest succeeded — no one was arrested, and what the Janus Society called “indiscriminate denials of service” at the restaurant came to an end.
Drum, a 1960s Philadelphia culture and news magazine for gay men, described the protest as “the first sit-in of its kind in the history of the United States.”
“Philadelphia has always been a trailblazer in LGBTQ+ history, from the first Reminder Day marches in 1965 — four years before Stonewall — to the Dewey’s sit-in, where LGBTQ+ youth stood up to a restaurant’s refusal to serve them,” said Philadelphia Gay News founder Mark Segal. Segal will curate historical content to ensure the city’s LGBTQ legacy is authentically represented in the new center.
The announcement comes at a time when federal agencies have been accused of removing or downplaying references to LGBTQ history and culture from government resources.
In March 2025, NPR reported that references to LGBTQ people, women, and people of color had been removed from several federal government websites. In compliance with President Trump’s executive orders eliminating “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” policies, even the National Park Service deleted mentions of transgender people from a historian Wendy Rouse article on the suffragist movement.
Subscribe free to Metro Weekly’s digital magazine for the LGBTQ stories that matter most.
