Centro-Fly

Overview

Flatiron club (Dec 1999–Apr 2004) whose black-and-white Op-Art interior, two-room programming, and eclectic international booking, anchored by Marcus Lambkin and Dominique Keegan's Saturday residency and Carl Kennedy's GBH Friday, made it a flagship of early-2000s New York house and electronic culture before real-estate pressure and the bottle-service era forced its hand.

Centro-Fly opened in December 1999 at 45 West 21st Street in the Flatiron District, designed by Sally Bennett in what would later be catalogued as the Ultramodern Revival aesthetic of the late 1990s and early 2000s: black-and-white geometric patterns and concentric circles covered the walls, a sunken bar anchored the rear, lounge space lined the perimeter, and a DJ booth elevated roughly six feet above the main floor gave performers direct sightlines to the crowd. Two dancefloors ran simultaneously (the main room upstairs and a second room below) with a VIP area tucked behind the kitchen. The space was described by NME as intimate despite several hundred people in attendance, capable of generating the energy of 'a personal party.' The club's programming operated on two distinct but overlapping tracks. Marcus Lambkin (later known as Shit Robot) and Dominique Keegan, Irish expats who simultaneously ran Plant Bar on East 3rd Street, held the Saturday night residency and booked the room's headline slots. Under their stewardship Centro-Fly hosted Chemical Brothers (October 24, 2003), John Digweed (March 2003), Jimmy Van M and Chris Fortier (NYE 2002), Fatboy Slim, and an array of British and European electronic acts who would often continue their nights at Plant Bar afterward. On Fridays, GBH (Great British House) (billed as 'New York's longest-running weekly house party') filled the room under resident Carl Kennedy, a Birmingham-born DJ who had launched GBH at a smaller venue around 1998 before relocating it to Centro-Fly when the club opened; his co-residents Anthony Mac, Seth (who ran a second room of '80s and new wave), and Frank Delour (hip-hop and classics) gave the night a multi-room format. Kennedy later cited the room as having been 'voted America's No. 1 club' in 2001/2002, though no independent award body has been traced for this claim. In 2003, Pete Tong recorded a live BBC Radio 1 Essential Selection broadcast from the venue. Centro-Fly's cultural moment was bound up with New York's uneasy post-9/11 nightlife reopening. On September 25, 2001 (two weeks after the attacks) the club hosted a benefit for NYPD and FDNY widows' and children's funds with Moby, Danny Tenaglia, François K, Louie Vega, Junior Sanchez, Mark Ronson, Liquid Todd, and Ron Trent on the bill. Resident Advisor later described it as 'one of NYC's flagship clubs'; the Red Bull Music Academy Daily placed it within an early-2000s resurgence in which Lambkin, Keegan, and James Murphy were credited with giving New York 'a sound again.' The club drew music-industry crowds alongside 'Euro-trendy and downtown chic' regulars, and later Resident Advisor accounts note that its dancefloor 'stayed full the entire night.' Centro-Fly's closing, on April 25, 2004, was staged as a literal funeral: after Todd Terry's set a coffin was carried through the packed dancefloor in procession, from which Fatboy Slim emerged at the DJ booth. Armand Van Helden, Junior Sanchez, and Todd Terry also played the final night, with Fatboy Slim headlining the spectacle. The closure was attributed to what the Red Bull Music Academy Daily called 'real-estate wars and bottle-service venues', the economic forces that extinguished much of the generation of New York clubs that had defined the late-1990s-to-early-2000s moment. No successor venue at the address has been documented.

Oral histories & archival media

Archive plates

Plates fill in as scans clear rights

Sonic profile

Cultural role

DJs, promoters & people

Follow a name to see other rooms they connect to

Parties & residencies

Tags

Related rooms