New rainbow crosswalks have been installed in the Gayborhood

Philadelphia’s Gayborhood now has a more permanent pop of color, thanks to newly refreshed rainbow crosswalks at 13th and Locust Streets.

The crosswalks were refreshed with a material known as thermoplastic, rather than paint, Streets Department spokesperson Keisha McCarty-Skelton said. The material is often used for permanent street markings, such as road striping, and is more durable and longer lasting than the traffic paint previously used to mark the rainbow crosswalks.

The crosswalks also have a few more stripes this time around, representing the “Progress Pride” flag, which adds five additional stripes to the traditional Pride flag, and is an evolution of the Philly Pride Flag. Those colors — black, brown, white, pink, and light blue — represent transgender and marginalized communities, as well as people who have died of AIDS.

The refresh of Philly’s rainbow crosswalk comes at a time when LGBTQ rights are under attack across the country. There are about 490 anti-LGBTQ bills moving through state legislatures nationwide.

Installed Sunday, the new thermoplastic rainbow crosswalks were done under the Streets Department’s Center City resurfacing project. They came following earlier repaving on 13th Street in order to “prevent tire tracking on the new crosswalks,” according to the city. Ramos and Associates, a local contractor, completed the work, which cost $125,000, McCarty-Skelton said.

These rainbow crosswalks are supposed to be permanent, according to the Washington Square West Civic Association. That’s a marked change for the crosswalks, which have been a beloved landmark in the Gayborhood for just shy of a decade.

Installed in June 2015, the crosswalks debuted a day before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage with its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. Announced by Philly Pride Presents, the former organizers of Philly’s annual Pride Parade, the crosswalks were later dedicated at the Annual Reminders Block Party, which honored the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. LGBT-rights group demonstrations.

But the original crosswalks were not meant to be permanent, and by 2018, they had faded heavily due to years of traffic and utility work. There was no one consistently maintaining them, The Inquirer reported in 2018, but some locals had been using Swiffers to clean them the first month after they were installed.

“It’s been destroyed,” Franny Price, ousted executive director of Philly Pride Presents, told The Inquirer in 2018. The group dissolved in 2021 amid accusations of racism and transphobia.

Price and the city then began looking for more permanent solutions to keep the crosswalks vibrant. One option, The Inquirer reported, was thermoplastic, which had been used in other cities such as West Hollywood to increase the longevity of their rainbow crosswalks.

An initial refresh came last July, when PATCO crews repainted the rainbow crosswalks during an accessibility project, CBS3 reported.

It is not clear how many other cities maintain rainbow crosswalks nationwide. But Philadelphia is among a number of places that feature them, including Seattle; San Diego; Key West, Fla., and Newport, R.I.