CHARAS / El Bohio / P.S. 64

This is the former P.S. 64 building and location of CHARAS/El Bohio, on 9th between B and C (the Christodora seen on the left). There’s a lot that I could write here, but I will try to condense it to the best of my ability: this building was constructed between 1904 and 1906, crucial years in the evolution of the LES from “Kleindeutschland” into a largely Eastern-European Jewish neighborhood. Designed by C.B.J Snyder, P.S. 64 was an innovative public school building, among other things the first in NYC to provide free professional theater to the public (its grand Auditorium was the site of many productions, talks, and important local political events - supposedly FDR would gauge the strength of his Jewish base by the turnout for his speeches at the school). In the 70’s the city shut the doors and it fell into disrepair. CHARAS, a community organization that had sprung out of Puerto Rican gang culture, alongside Reverend Norman Eddy’s Adopt-A-Building organization (which had recently moved its headquarters from East Harlem to the LES), worked together to reclaim this great building as a cultural center for the area many warmly dubbed Loisaida. From their new home in “El Bohio”, CHARAS worked not only to host after school and physical fitness programs, arts classes, foster many early artists, activists, and cultural organizations through residency programs and by providing space in the famous auditorium; they were also urban ecology pioneers, working with the city to install some of the first solar-heating in public housing, establishing many of our favorite community gardens, even building geodesic domes with Buckminster Fuller. El Bohio was open and active until 1999 when the Giuliani administration’s sale of the building to millionaire developer Gregg Singer closed. In an unprecedented turn, DeBalsio announced during his re-election campaign that the city was interested in re-acquiring the building, despite Singer’s years of attempts to develop the site, and recent lawsuits contending a conspiracy against his plans to turn the site into college dorms. As of writing this I do not know where these plans stand.

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A Hidden Lower East Side

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