Irving Plaza (known through sponsorship as Irving Plaza, powered by Klipsch and formerly known as the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza) is a

ballroom A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic ...

-style music venue located within the Union Square neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It has been featured on the ''Complex City Guide'' list of "50 Best Concert Venues of America" in 2013.

Polish Army veterans

The building was purchased by the Polish Army Veterans of America District 2 in 1948, and turned into a Polish-American community center. Generals and other distinguished Poles graced its stage including, in 1976, the future

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

Rock venue

In 1978, the hall was converted to a rock music venue by future

Peppermint Lounge The Peppermint Lounge was a popular discotheque located at 128 West 45th Street in New York City that was open from 1958 to 1965, although a new one was opened in 1980. It was the launchpad for the global Twist craze in the early 1960s. Many claim ...

promoters Tom Goodkind and Frank Roccio, who after a year began to share promotional efforts with a "Club 57" crew headed by Jane Friedman and Louis Tropia. Goodkind and Roccio brought in acts such as the

B-52s B5, B05, B-5 may refer to: Biology * ATC code B05 (''Blood substitutes and perfusion solutions''), a therapeutic subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System * Cytochrome ''b''5, ubiquitous electron transport hemoprotein ...

Talking Heads Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.Talki ...

, the

Ramones The Ramones were an American punk rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first true punk rock group. Despite achieving a limited commercial appeal in the United St ...

and, with Friedman and Tropia, a wealth of British bands, establishing the venue as a premier American location for

punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

and new wave. The venue was reopened by Chuck Terzella in October 1983, with management by Frank Gallagher and the English DJ Andy Dunkley, presenting

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...

and other ethnic music, plus

college rock College rock was the alternative rock music played on student-run university and college campus radio stations located in the United States and Canada in the 1980s. The stations' playlists were often created by students who avoided the mainstream ...

, proclaiming in their ads "We don't have video". Terzella's club filed for

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debto ...

in December 1985, and closed in June 1986. Chris Williamson, who already promoted the punk and hard rock oriented "Rock Hotel" nights at the Ritz, then took over in November 1986. He began programming

alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or commercial ...

occasionally using the designation "Rock Motel". A New Year's Eve Rock Hotel show with The Dictators turned nasty after the band initiated a food fight and a bouncer became upset and began beating up some of the patrons. Plans by the Polish Veterans to convert the building to condos fell through. They had to spend $25,000 on bringing the venue up to firecode before, in April 1987, Chris Williamson re-opened the club, featuring improved sound and lights, with an inaugural multi-night stand of

Big Audio Dynamite Big Audio Dynamite (later known as Big Audio Dynamite II and Big Audio, and often abbreviated BAD) were an English band, formed in London in 1984 by Mick Jones, former lead guitarist, and co-lead vocalist of the Clash. The band mixed various mu ...

. Williamson continued putting on shows into 1988—including hosting the popular "Milky Way" hip hop nights—but, as Irving Place gentrified, there was increasing local opposition to the hall. A plan by Williamson to present a play in the winter of 1988 fell through and, in December 1988, it was announced that the club would close and be demolished and turned into condos. The last show was The Ramones on December 31, 1988. Dee Dee Ramone praised the venue: "It was funky without being a dump." Ron Delsener took on management in the early 1990s.

Live Nation Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. is an American global entertainment company and monopoly that was founded in 2010 following the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. The company promotes, operates, and manages ticket sales for live entertai ...

, a spinoff of

Clear Channel Communications iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...

, renovated and reopened Irving Plaza under the name "Fillmore New York At Irving Plaza" on April 11, 2007, reviving the name of the former

Fillmore East The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the (at the time) Lower East Side neighborhood, now called the East Village neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan of New York City. I ...

in Manhattan's East Village, which had been open from 1968 to 1971. However, in May 2010 Live Nation conceded that the new name had not caught on and due to "unrelenting demand" the name "Irving Plaza" would be restored as from June 23, 2010. A replica of the original marquee was commissioned. On February 14, 2015,

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

played a surprise show announced only that morning on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. On May 25, 2016, four people were shot at a T.I. concert before T.I. took the stage. One of the victims died later at a hospital. In 2019, the venue closed for renovations, with completion anticipated in 2020.

References

Notes

External links

* {{Authority control Nightclubs in Manhattan Cultural history of New York City Music venues in Manhattan Drinking establishments in Manhattan Nightlife in New York City Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1985 Gramercy Park

Polish Army veterans

Rock venue

See also

References

External links