Since I had no recollection of this post and since both James Bogardus and Walrus (get it?) sent along more info, I figured it was worth revisiting Yoko Ono’s history at 112 Chambers. And wow, talk about Tribeca’s hey day, 60 years back.

The philosopher and musician Henry Flynt (he coined the phrase ‘concept art’ among other things) describes coming to Ono’s loft at 112 Chambers, next door to the former Patriot, in 1961. Recorded in 2006, it’s a fun recounting of the block, Coltrane licks, Yoko’s standoffishness, and the cultural pyramid with Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage at the top.

James and Walrus also sent along this link from MoMA, which recounts Yoko’s time there renting the top floor of 112 in June 1961. “She intended to use the space as a studio but also envisioned it as a place to present new music and ideas, a place unlike any other in the contemporary performance scene dominated by Midtown concert halls. Ono borrowed a baby grand piano from a friend and created makeshift furniture with discarded crates, transforming the low-ceilinged, gray-paneled loft into a vibrant environment. Over the course of six months, Ono and composer La Monte Young presented numerous events by artists, musicians, dancers, and composers, the programs for which are exhibited here. Several works combined music, visual art, and performance, blurring the distinctions between mediums. On any given evening there were as many as two hundred attendees, including art-world figures such as John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Peggy Guggenheim, Isamu Noguchi, George Maciunas, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.”

The MoMA audio file also has this recollection from Yoko herself:
“Well, by then, I knew a few people. And I realized that all these people usually create music in New York City. But there’s no place for them to present their work. And I said, you know, I think it’s a great idea if we created a place where all of us can present our music. It doesn’t have to be big or anything.

“Those days, some artists are taking lofts as their workplace. And it’s not very expensive. It was amazing how I wanted that place. And, when I think about it now, whatever I wanted, I was going to do it – I was daring to do it. But it’s a coldwater flat, and it was in the winter. It was so cold, you know? We didn’t even have electricity. And the downstairs guy was very kind and gave me a kind of huge heater that just goes, brrrrrrr, like that, and it was great. So with that and the electricity, I was made.

“And so the first concert I gave – the only people who came was John Cage, David Tudor, who’s a pianist for John Cage, MC Richards. I think it was the second or third, Peggy Guggenheim brought Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp.

“The performance was very avant-garde, and what I did was I did with my voice, and I got the hint from a Japanese kabuki. You have the long hair, and you just turn around like a dance, you know? And each person who did something, they were very, very original and incredibly interesting. So it was very exciting.”

Those buildings are about to be redeveloped; a developer is proposing to convert 112 and 114 Chambers and add a one-story penthouse addition and a full renovation throughout. Those plans were presented to CB1 in January; my guess is if the gallerist Barbara Castelli wants to see inside, now is the time. (I sent them the name of the architect, and her assistant is trying to get in touch with the Sung family, who started Abacus Bank, whom she thinks is the owner. Si Jei Mei LLC has owned them since 1993.)

c. 2014