Beginning in the late 1960s, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was facing massive disinvestment by landlords, with up to 80% of the area’s housing stock abandoned and seized by the city’s government for non-payment of taxes by the late 1970s. The city’s land use policies at the time kept these buildings empty until the area again became attractive to developers and investors.
ABC No Rio grew out of the 1979 Real Estate Show, which was organized by Colab (Collaborative Projects), an artists’ group dedicated to fostering connections between artists and members of the community. The show aimed to criticize the city’s building policies, which ultimately kept artists – who wanted to put the abandoned buildings around the city to use–from buying them.
The show opened to the public on January 1, 1980 in an abandoned building at 123 Delancey Street and was shut down before the morning of January 2 by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. In the following negotiations with HPD, the organizers of The Real Estate show were granted the use of the building at 156 Rivington Street, which became ABC No Rio. The name derives from the remaining letters of an effaced sign that was on the building: “Abogado Con Notario” (Lawyer with Notary).
The center features a gallery space, darkroom, and silscreening studio and hosts various radical projects in NYC, including the NYC Food Not Bombs collective. ABC No Rio acts as a community center for the Lower East Side, sponsoring benefits for the community and promoting “do it yourself volunteerism, art and activism.”
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