The long-in-the-works replacement for renegade art collective ABC No Rio’s crumbling four-story Lower East Side building finally kicked into gear last month.
Excavation started on the 23-foot-wide lot at 156 Rivington Street that will house the permanent new home for ABC No Rio. Instead of the masonry structure that sat there for decades, a four-story building focused on low-energy use and bringing some greenery to the neighborhood will replace it.
SEE ALSO: Extell and Ikea Planning 29-Story Office Building at 570 Fifth Avenue
The former property — which ABC No Rio started squatting inside in the 1980s — dated back to the 1880s and was being held in place largely by its east and west dividing walls connected to the neighboring buildings.
ABC No Rio bought the building from the city for $1 in 2006. It was demolished in 2016, and it’s taken that long to raise the cash to replace it. In the process, New York City officials and ABC No Rio have been repairing their relationship since a city standoff with squatters in the 1990s.
“We ended up in this really rough situation around 2015 when we were constantly chasing escalating construction costs,” said Steven Englander, ABC No Rio’s director. “It took quite a while to demonstrate to the city that we merited some financial support.”
Capital funding from the city’s cultural affairs department and some generous private donors — including a $1 million anonymous gift — finally put the wind back in ABC No Rio’s sails. In total, the organization has raised $21 million, enough to finally turn architect Paul Castrucci’s design for its new home, which he first dreamed up more than 10 years ago, into a reality.
The building will meet “passive house” standards for low-energy use. And a vertical botanical garden planted on its front façade will make it stand apart from its neighbors, a mix of historic tenement buildings and newer glass structures.
“It’s inspired by the sun. It’s inspired by the energy needs of the building,” said Castrucci, himself a member of ABC No Rio. “There’s a whole series of effects of the design.”
That includes the zinc façade underneath the greenery that will fade with time and develop a soft patina, Castrucci said.
The building’s green face will also help make up for the loss of the old spot’s rear garden, which ABC No Rio is giving up in order to build a larger exhibition and event space extending the entire length of the lot.
In the rear of the concrete block building, a staircase will lead to a rooftop courtyard punctuated by skylights that will ventilate the ground floor below in the summer months. Visitors will cross through this semi-secret garden on their way to the second through fourth floors, where ABC No Rio’s photo studio meeting spaces and a cherished library of small-circulation zines the organization has been amassing for four decades will be housed.
Plus, the collective’s punk and hardcore matinees that drew crowds to see now-defunct bands like Nausea, Born Against, Orchid and Rorschach in the 1990s will return, Englander said.
The first phase of construction — which will hopefully include securing a public assembly license from the city — will take about 20 months, Englander said. Finishes to the upper floor studio space and rooftop courtyard will come after.
The groundbreaking last month was “quite joyous,” Englander said. For many of the collective’s members, it was also a reunion of sorts.
“The zine librarians and visual artists are still doing projects together, but the punk crew — they hadn’t seen each other in ages,” Englander said. “My responsibility is to keep people’s enthusiasm going. If you build it, they will come, right?”
Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.
