Area

Overview

Tribeca club where four California transplants reimagined nightlife as curated immersive art: a 13,000-square-foot former American Express stable that shed its entire interior every six weeks, with installations by Warhol, Haring and Basquiat alongside Justin Strauss and Johnny Dynell playing New Order, hip-hop and early house on a Richard Long sound system.

Area occupied 157 Hudson Street in a brick building originally constructed in 1866 as the American Express Company stables, a pre-history that gave it its industrial bones. It was founded in September 1983 by four childhood friends from California: Eric Goode and his brother Christopher Goode, Shawn Hausman, and Darius Azari (a fifth name, Zwi Wasserstein, appears in some accounts; the NYU Fales finding aid and Gallery 98's archival scholarship list only the four). The club's defining operating logic was the 'change': every six to eight weeks, a crew of roughly thirty artists and fabricators gutted and rebuilt the interior around a new concept (Confinement, Suburbia, Science Fiction, Natural History, Fashion, Gnarly, Childhood) completing the transformation in four days at budgets reportedly reaching $60,000 per iteration. The final theme before closing was 'Childhood.' Over four years, the room cycled through approximately twenty-five distinct incarnations, each announced by an elaborately themed invitation: 5,000 capsules dissolving in water for the September 1983 opening, champagne crackers for New Year's Eve, hollowed eggs for Natural History, black handkerchiefs for Halloween. Serge Becker served as art director, supported by Jennifer Goode, Michael Staats, and Kenny Baird. The dancefloor lived inside the installations rather than beside them. Justin Strauss held the Saturday residency from opening to close; Johnny Dynell played Wednesdays and Fridays, with his opening sets sometimes programmed to the theme (Vivaldi for 'Gardens,' Bruce Springsteen for 'Suburbia') before the floor opened up. Belinda Becker, Sheba Legend, and Timmy Regisford (Sunday nights) rounded out the regular roster. Both Strauss and Dynell played on a Richard Long sound system, the same engineer whose bass cabinets had defined Paradise Garage; Strauss had apprenticed his ears there before coming to Area. The mix was eclectic by design: UK post-punk and synth-pop (New Order, Depeche Mode), the hip-hop and dancehall current on the street, early house, and downtown art-rock. Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was simultaneously contributing installations to themed nights, DJed the back bar, playing jazz (Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane), bebop, reggae, and dub with studied indifference to whether anyone could dance to it. Basquiat DJed his own birthday party on December 19, 1985, co-hosted with Eric Goode; he played Keith Haring's Pop Shop party on the floor in April 1986. The curatorial model drew directly on the tradition of Happenings and, in the founders' telling, Zurich's 1916 Cabaret Voltaire: nightlife as a medium for ideas rather than as a backdrop to consumption. The entrance was by door selection, requiring neither money nor membership, a deliberate contrast to Studio 54's celebrity velvet rope. Andy Warhol produced his 'Invisible Sculpture' (1985) for the Art theme (a pedestal with a label, his body the work) and contributed contact-sheet portraits shot in the bathrooms. Keith Haring spray-painted installations on-site. Among the artists whose work appeared in the space across its run: Barbara Kruger, Chuck Close, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Kienholz, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Jeff Koons, and David Hockney. Regular attendees included Grace Jones, Madonna, Yoko Ono, Boy George, David Byrne, Cher, Marc Jacobs, Betsey Johnson, and JFK Jr. Area closed in early 1987, the Test Pressing interview with Strauss gives March 1987, though no single closing event has been as mythologized as Paradise Garage's Last Party. The founders' own account emphasizes intent: the club was never supposed to run indefinitely; the concept of impermanence was built into its DNA. The city's landscape in those final months supplied additional pressure, the AIDS crisis was devastating the downtown community from which Area drew both its workforce and its audience, and the October 1987 stock market crash would soon contract the spending culture that supported it. Eric Goode and Serge Becker went on to collaborate on subsequent downtown venues. The building at 157 Hudson Street was later converted to residential use. The club's life is documented in the 368-page book 'Area: 1983–1987' (Abrams, 2013), by Eric and Jennifer Goode, compiled from Ben Buchanan's official photography, invitations, and ephemera. Primary archival material (invitations, press releases, printed objects) is held at NYU's Fales Library and Special Collections as the Alice Himelstein AREA Collection (MSS 328).

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