Club 57 (nightclub)

You are approaching fifty-seven Saint Marks Place, the address of a basement that once housed a legendary cultural laboratory known as Club fifty-seven. Between nineteen seventy-eight and nineteen eighty-three, this space functioned as a no-budget incubator for a generation of artists who would go on to shape modern culture. It started when the Holy Cross Polish National Catholic Church looked for a way to generate revenue from their empty cellar, unknowingly providing a sanctuary for the city's most daring outcasts. Unlike the polished, velvet-roped venues of the era, this basement had no liquor license and required a five-dollar membership fee to keep the doors open for anyone looking to experiment with art, film, or performance.