At 156 Rivington Street on New York’s Lower East Side, there’s a 20-foot-wide gap between new luxury condominiums and an old brick-and-mortar tenement. The void was once filled by ABC No Rio, a legendary anarchist music venue, zine library, and locus for anti-racist, anti-gentrification art and activism.
Today, after eight years in “exile,” ABC No Rio has plans to move back home. Paul Castrucci Architects, whose office is just up the street, is designing a new ground-up building for ABC No Rio in situ at 156 Rivington.
The new 4-story building will have galleries, a kitchen, offices, a darkroom for photographers, a print shop, a zine library, a computer lab, a rooftop garden, and more. There will be a planted facade, and a 4th-floor reading nook will peek out from the zine library. The building will also host ABC No Rio’s famous Books Through Bars and Food Not Bombs mutual aid programs. Equally prescient, the structure will integrate passive house design principles in line with ABC No Rio’s environmental politics.
“New York politicians and real estate people have always had a cozy relationship. I’m honestly surprised we’ve gotten so much support from the city to go ahead with this project,” said Steven Englander, who’s been a part of ABC No Rio since the 1980s. “I think lots of people from the city have nostalgia for how the neighborhood was 20 years ago, and the support we’ve been getting to rebuild ABC No Rio is part of that.”
156 Rivington Street: Then and Now
ABC No Rio was founded inside an old walk-up at 156 Rivington Street in 1980. Legend has it the venue’s name derived from an entity that once rented 156 Rivington, Abogado Con Notario, but a sign had diminished to the point where only the letters “Ab C No rio” were left standing.
When ABC No Rio got its start, the Lower East Side was, to say the least, very different. The squatters movement had just taken off, and many artists and activists moved into vacant flats alongside the Puerto Rican, Black, and Jewish families who had been there for decades. ABC No Rio stood out from other venues in the neighborhood like CBGBs for its radical inclusivity, much like 924 Gilman Street, another leftwing punk venue in Berkeley, California.
After its founding, ABC No Rio hosted exhibitions that still have people talking today. Pop-ups like The Real Estate Show, The Crime Show, dog stencils by Anton van Dalen, and anti-war murals by John Fekner and Johnny Matos all challenged the “capitalist-driven gallery scene” that had overtaken New York. Cavegirls, a 1982 indy film starring Kiki Smith, was filmed in ABC No Rio’s backyard. Many of the shows were met with praise by writers from The Village Voice, and other art mags.
In the 1990s, as ABC No Rio garnered acclaim for its punk matinees and art exhibitions, it fought hard against eviction by the city, as property values in the area increased. It was around that time when ABC No Rio members started thinking about buying 156 Rivington, so as to resist eviction. The disputes between ABC No Rio and the New York City Council were captured in myriad articles by The Villager, Manhattan Mirror, The New York Times, and other outlets.
In 1997, ABC No Rio won an epic eviction battle after many anti-gentrification activists were arrested at protests outside 156 Rivington. Then, nine years later, the anarchist collective-turned-nonprofit bought 156 Rivington Street in 2006 for $1. (Yes, $1.) But the historic locale was demolished in 2016 after the structure was deemed beyond repair. “The original building was timber frame with brick infill,” Englander said. “It was in really bad shape. The timber had wasted away, and it needed significant ADA improvements.”
When the need for a new ground-up building became imminent, activists at ABC No Rio went to work. “To raise money we sold paintings at art galleries and on clothes lines for $50 a pop. We had little punk zine sales, and hosted fundraisers at Bowery Ballroom. We eventually raised almost $250,000 this way by 2008,” Englander shared. “Over time, the fundraising drive grew. We eventually hosted fancy art galas where we sold paintings for $500 and even $15,000. We amazingly got an anonymous gift for $1 million.”
Since 2016, 156 Rivington has been a hole in the ground, and ABC No Rio’s zine library, archives, and offices have been at Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, another important Lower East Side staple (currently being restored by Sage & Coombe). Its Food Not Bombs program relocated to a kitchen inside the headquarters of a local newspaper, The Catholic Worker, on East 1st Street, and still managed to feed people for free every week at Tompkins Square Park. Soon, ABC No Rio will come back to 156 Rivington, and end its period in “exile.”
Rebuilding ABC No Rio
Architect Paul Castrucci is intimately familiar with the needs of his client. He’s been in the Lower East Side for years, and completed many projects there. In 1985, Castrucci cofounded Bullet Space, a gallery inside of a legalized squat, with his brother Andrew. Today, Castrucci helps renovate former tenement buildings in the Lower East Side into limited equity co-ops so as to provide affordable housing in New York’s fastest gentrifying neighborhood.
The new 156 Rivington by Paul Castrucci Architects will utilize sustainable design strategies like planters and solar panels on the facade, and “energy and water efficiency and conservation; use of local and recycled materials; use of less toxic (low VOC) materials; recycling of materials from our demolition; creation of a green roof; and use of both active and passive solar technologies.” All of these features are meant to demonstrate ABC No Rio’s mission and purpose.
For Englander, the verdant facade will be both ideological and aesthetic. “Who wants to see another 4- or 5-story glass curtain building in the Lower East Side, right? That would have looked absurd for us,” Englander shared. “We went with zinc metal panels where foliage could grow as a gesture that suggested an asserted rootedness in the community.”
ABC No Rio estimates that the project at 156 Rivington will cost $8 million, and is currently collecting donations. The nonprofit has since accrued 80 percent of what it needs—$1.5 million came from private funding, $5 million came from the city of New York, and $275,000 from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
“Over the next 50 years, ABC No Rio will be situated in a new, modern building, and a new generation of young artists and activists are going to put their own patina on it,” Englander said. “Once that happens, it will elude back to the time in New York when ABC No Rio got its start.”
ABC No Rio’s board hopes to complete construction across two phases, and construction is slated for completion in 2027.
