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Theater For the New City

The First Avenue Market opened on December 1, 1938 as part of Fiorello LaGuardia's effort to clean up the streets of the Lower East Side by forcing pushcart vendors into large communal markets. Ironically, the effort resulted in a drastic drop in business for the merchants who had fought for the changes and added many of the poorer pushcart vendors to the already swollen ranks of unemployed workers in the Great Depression.

Theatre for the New City moved into the building in 1986 and created four performing spaces:

• Joyce and Seward Johnson Theater - 240 seat black box
• Cino Theater - 99 seat black box
• Community Space Theater - 99 seat black box
• Cabaret Theater - 65 seat cabaret

I assume some kind of financial transaction resulted in the air rights over the building being utilized for a large apartment tower, but you wouldn't know from the cleanliness of the theatrical facility.

Next: TriBeCa Playhouse