Venues and Site Visits

Institue Venues

The Bronx Music Hall/Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC)
Founded by the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco), the BMHC is committed to preserving and promoting Bronx music, cultivating Bronx artists, spurring neighborhood revival, and providing accessible cultural programs for the community. The BMHC is a performing arts and community center for incubating new work, cultivating a community of artists, and bringing together audiences to celebrate Bronx music. In 2017, WHEDco broke ground on Bronx Commons, its third affordable housing development, which will serve as the permanent home for the Bronx Music Heritage Center. The cultural centerpiece of the development, the Bronx Music Hall, which will open Spring 2023.
 
La Sala de Pepe
La Sala de Pepe y Foto Espacio founded by Jose “Pepe” Flores and Lyn Pentacost opens a portal to the past, drawing from a long history of Latino social spaces and working to preserve the cultural spirit of the Lower East Side (or the Nuyorican term for the neighborhood, Loisaida.. It is a new kind of ‘social club’: an art space where community ‘elders’, ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, photographers, media makers and cultural activists, share their knowledge and street heritage. Pepe hosts film screenings, lectures, readings, exhibits and music performances at the space paying homage to the neighborhood’s legacy of culture and activism.
 
Rincón Criollo
This casita (“little house”) in a community garden in the South Bronx is lovingly called, La Casita de Chema, named after the founder, José “Chema” Soto.  In the mid’70s Chema turned an abandoned lot into a little Puerto Rican musical hub in the Bronx. Rincón Criollo has become one of many casitas that dot the Melrose neighborhood as the Puerto Rican residents of the area make these spaces into places where their cultural traditions are carried on and maintained. This particular casita became the hub for Afro-Puerto Rican musical forms and is still the center of that music scene today.
 
Casa Amadeo

Casa Amadeo, antigua Casa Hernández is the oldest, continuously-occupied Latin music store in New York City having opened in 1941 in the Bronx. It was preceded by Almacenes Hernández by Victoria Hernández and her brother Rafael Hernández (Puerto RIco’s and Latin Mwerica’s greatest composer) at 1724 Madison Avenue in 1927. The second music store called Casa Hernández  founded by Victoria in 1941. It was sold in 1969 to musician and composer Miguel Angel “Mike” Amadeo, who renamed it Casa Amadeo, antigua Casa Hernández. Mike Amadeo still owns and operates the music store. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places  in 2001 for its musical legacy and being in the vanguard of the new Puerot Rican businesses that moved to that area in the 1940s and post war..

 
52 Park

Playground 52 in the South Bronx is named for the advocacy group “52 People for Progress” (52PFP) because of the school across the street which was originally P.S. 52. a middle school which many Latin music legends first met. 52PFP lobbied to get a theater built in the part sp they could hold weekly concerts in the summer to remind the neighborhood of its ncredible cultural legacy.  52PFP assembled in 1980 under the direction of Al Quinones and the group invested thousands of hours improving their neighborhood park. 52 People for Progress is an early example of an advocacy group that joined forces with Parks to help revitalize and maintain parkland within their community.

Center for Puerto Rican Studies

Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, is the largest university-based research institute, library, and archive dedicated to the Puerto Rican diaspora experience in the United States.

 

For Questions Please Contact 
Elena Martinez
emartinez@citylore.org
917-557-2354