ABRONS ART CENTER &
HENRY STREET PLAYHOUSE


1975 - Present  

The sisters Alice and Irene Lewisohn were volunteers at the Henry Street settlement. They directed drama clubs for neighborhood residents and funded the building of the Playhouse on Grand street. The Playhouse is renowned for its avant garde performances and expanded in 1975 with the building of an amphitheater and studios to become the Abrons Art Center.
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This project is an expansion of the themes from the exhibit Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida (2019) authored and designed by the urban historian and architect Nandini Bagchee in partnership with curator Libertad Guerra.

AELES is an evolving resource that can grow to include supplemental layers of the case studies selected and the ongoing survival and futuring intents of these legacies.