NUYORICAN POETS CAFE


1973 - Present

Began in the living room salon in the LES apartment of writer and poet Miguel Algarin. By 1981, the overflow of audience and artists led the Nuyorican poets to purchase a former tenement building on E 3rd street. The Cafe remains at this location to champion the use of poetry, jazz, theater, hip-hop and the spoken word as a means of social empowerment for Latinx, African-American and minority artists.

︎︎︎

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.