For over 50 years, artists have worked and lived in the studios above Carnegie Hall. Now, Carnegie Hall wants the 50 tenants to move so it can renovate and expand the hall's education programs. But they aren't leaving without a fight. WNYC host Jonathan Schwartz tells us about his experiences in the building.
Comments [2]
I am dismayed to hear that there is an attempt to evict the last tenant artists and musicians of Carnegie Hall. I attended ballet class there from Miss Fokine in the 1940s and have always considered Carnegie Hall an 'inalienable right' to New York culture.
If this tradition is lost, we are just not serving our heritage properly. Why isn't this building classified as a National Monument? Doesn't the Carnegie Trust have a protection clause? I find it scandalous that no efforts are being made to preserve the Carnegie arts tradition. Are these artists being offered an alternate solution in Manhattan? Let's turn it into an international "cause celebre"! Maybe the French would like to offer space in Montparnasse.
Constance Konold
Jonathan Schwartz comes off as totally unsympathetic in every way. I mean, who says "I just told you why." And so self-indulgent. I'm totally sympathetic to the plight of these people being forced out of homes that they've lived in for decades - it's an unfortunate reality of the NY we live in currently. But Schwartz isn't doing them any favors when he behaves this way.
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