Knockdown Center is a cultural space, performance venue, and art center, located in the Maspeth neighborhood of Queens, New York City. The Center includes many architecturally notable features: 20,000 square-foot main hall, a backyard nicknamed The Ruins, a large gallery, and several other adjacent halls of varying sizes.
Since 2013, Knockdown Center has been the venue of many musical and visual art events. As of 2022, artists who have performed there include Wu-Tang Clan, LCD Soundsystem, Jeff Mills, Kim Gordon, Turnstile, Arca, Frank Ocean, Honey Dijon, Animal Collective, Juice World, James Blake, Fred Again, Sun O))), Yung Lean, and Chelsea Manning. [1] Earlier in the same year, Pitchfork announced an all-new concert series called Pitchfork Presents, to be hosted at the Center. The venue has been called the "Queens' answer to The Kitchen," [2] a reference to the notable avant-garde performance venue in Manhattan's Chelsea district.
Knockdown Center is also home to Basement (opened in May 2019) [3] a techno club, and The Ruins, an on-site outdoor venue. It is home to NYC's Horsemeat Disco and Tiki Disco events and annual events Bushwig, Get Wrecked and Carry Pride, Haunted Hop, Everyday People Roller Disco, and Coldest Winter Ball.
The building has been in continuous use for 100 years. First constructed in 1903, it was first used as a glass factory by the Gleason-Tiebout Glass Company. [4] In the 1930s, the proprietor of the building transitioned the warehouse for a door manufacturing company. Named the Manhattan Door Factory, [5] this company invented the "knock-down frame," a kind of door which allows contractors to build walls first and then install doors later.
The warehouse became vacant in 2010, when the door company moved its operations to New Jersey. In the years that followed until 2013, the grandson of the original proprietor [6] who inherited the grounds began cleaning the building up.[ citation needed ]
In 2012, as Knockdown Center, Michael Merck, Kate Watson, and Tyler Myers opened an outdoor exhibition of sculptural mini-golf holes, [7] commissioned after a call for entries. A few events began in 2013 [8] before the building was renovated. The building’s first liquor license application was denied in April, 2014 prior to an M.I.A. concert on May 9, 2014.
The renovated first floor opened on May 20, 2016 [9] with liquor license after a very contentious two year struggle.
Basement opened on May 10, 2019 with a single room in the basement of Knockdown Center. [10] Co-founded by Téa Abashidze, Gega Japaridze, and Tyler Myers, and owned/operated by Knockdown Center, its program is tightly and purposefully curated around dark techno. Basement opened a second room called Studio on September 2, 2022, expanding the programatic scope of the venue while maintaining the focus of the main room.
The Charles B. Wang Center, located at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, in Suffolk County, on Long Island, is a building dedicated to understanding Asian and American cultures, and the interactions of these cultures with other world cultures. The center was completed in 2002, and was designed by P.H. Tuan. Building of the center was intended to be funded by Charles B. Wang through a $52 million donation to Stony Brook University, which was then the largest ever private donation to a school in the State University of New York system. Actual construction costs far exceeded the original donation, becoming a source of controversy among students and faculty at the time.
Dumbo is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It encompasses two sections: one situated between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, which connect Brooklyn to Manhattan across the East River, and another extending eastward from the Manhattan Bridge to the Vinegar Hill area. The neighborhood is bounded by Brooklyn Bridge Park to the north, the Brooklyn Bridge to the west, Brooklyn Heights to the south, and Vinegar Hill to the east. Dumbo is part of Brooklyn Community Board 2.
Studio 54 is a Broadway theater and former nightclub at 254 West 54th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Opened as the Gallo Opera House in 1927, it served as a CBS broadcast studio in the mid-20th century. Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager opened the Studio 54 nightclub, retaining much of the former theatrical and broadcasting fixtures, inside the venue in 1977. Roundabout Theatre Company renovated the space into a Broadway house in 1998.
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