Although longtime New Yorkers will bemoan the transformation of once-scrappy neighborhoods like Williamsburg or the East Village, gentrification does have its holdouts. PS 122, a former public school building located on the corner of First Avenue and 11th Street, is one such fortress of bohemian activity. As if ripped from the book of Jonathan Larson’s Rent, a group of artist squatters took over the Beaux Arts–inspired, five-story structure in 1978 after local officials, cowing to the city’s perilous financial crisis, closed the primary school.
Those squatters have not budged. In fact, today the arts groups—which include Painting Space 122, Performance Space 122, and theater company Mabou Mines—are institutions in their own right. (The AIDS Service Center NYC also operates there.) And they have forged a comfortable working relationship with New York City government.
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