Market Hotel

Overview

All-ages DIY concert hall above the Myrtle–Broadway J/M/Z stop, run as a nonprofit by promoter Todd Patrick (Todd P); the second floor of a former Corn Bank branch that hosted Latin dance nights as the Bristol Room and Broadway Chateau before the fire department shuttered it in 1984, then reopened as an unlicensed punk-and-indie loft in 2008, survived two police closures, a six-figure renovation, and finally achieved full licensing in 2018.

Market Hotel occupies the second floor of a wedge-shaped 1870s Corn Bank branch at the intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Broadway in Bushwick, directly above Mr. Kiwi Grocery and abutting the elevated J/M/Z tracks at Myrtle-Broadway, close enough that trains pass ten feet outside the floor-to-ceiling bay window behind the stage, rumbling through every set. The building's second floor had a prior life as a Dominican social club, operating under names including the Bristol Room and the Broadway Chateau from the 1960s into the early 1980s, hosting merengue, salsa, early house music, and Latin hip-hop for the neighborhood's Dominican and Puerto Rican communities; it was shut by the fire department in 1984 and sat vacant, its interior preserved in a dusty time capsule, for over two decades. In January 2008, Brooklyn independent promoter Todd Patrick, known as Todd P, and already instrumental in founding or anchoring Monster Island Basement, Silent Barn, and what would become 285 Kent and Death by Audio, reopened the space as Market Hotel. It operated in the mode he had developed across the aughts Brooklyn DIY corridor: all-ages, no meaningful acoustic treatment, volunteer-run, sliding-scale or minimal-cost admission, and a plywood stage that bands of any size had to adapt to. Without a liquor license or occupancy certificate, alcohol circulated on an informal basis. The room quickly became a circuit anchor for the indie-rock and punk underground, early Deerhunter, Dan Deacon, TV on the Radio, and a rotating cast of national touring acts and New York local bands, and earned coverage well beyond its modest physical scale. On April 3, 2010, NYPD raided the venue during a Smith Westerns show, discovering unlicensed alcohol service; some twenty officers cleared the room and the venue closed to the public immediately, with the building threatened with formal vacate orders. Rather than fold, Todd Patrick announced within weeks that Market Hotel would attempt the difficult transition from unlicensed loft to legitimate nonprofit. The governance model he outlined, a board of governors drawn from the New York arts community, community classes, neighborhood meetings, and all-ages programming as explicit institutional commitments, reflected both the regulatory reality and a sincere community vision. In 2011 an anonymous donor contributed $100,000 for renovation and code compliance, but construction did not begin in earnest until June 2013, when the last artists-in-residence vacated. Renovation consumed over two years: new electrical service was installed, stairways widened, a lift for disabled access added, fire sprinklers and HVAC retrofitted, and the bar surface was fashioned from the original bathroom's marble walls, an explicit material trace of the room's prior life. Market Hotel reopened on December 16, 2015, with Sleater-Kinney playing the most intimate of their five New York shows that week; the floor bowed and the M train rocketed past the back window through the whole set. Capacity at that point was approximately 300. A second closure followed in October 2016, when a joint NYPD, SLA, and Department of Buildings operation discovered the venue warehousing roughly 1,000 bottles and cans of alcohol without a warehouse permit, the venue had been operating on rolling temporary event permits, legally permissible for nonprofits but apparently misread as authorizing on-site storage. Todd Patrick characterized the enforcement as a 'gotcha moment.' The venue pivoted to a strict no-alcohol policy and continued in a community-center mode: after-school programs, literacy classes, gymnastics, K2 task force meetings, and MTA community hearings filled the daytime and early-evening calendar. In June 2018, Market Hotel received a Certificate of Occupancy and a full on-premises liquor license, finally reopening as a fully-apportioned, full-time concert hall. As a licensed institution Market Hotel has continued the programming logic of its unlicensed phase: indie rock, punk, experimental, and hip-hop bookings that prioritize emerging and under-resourced acts, priced for accessibility and open to all ages. The formal nonprofit mission, 'to find common ground between nightlife, culture, and community service... that do not discriminate by age, background, socio-economic status, system of belief, or personal identity', codifies what was already the operational practice. The room's physical signature remains unchanged: the prominent support pillar that audience members still navigate around (the pillar acquired an ironic Twitter account, @MarketPillar), the bay window behind the stage through which the city and its trains are perpetually visible, the wedge floor plan that makes every show feel slightly improvised. It remains one of the few spaces from the 2008–2010 Brooklyn DIY wave (alongside its Todd P-affiliated siblings Death by Audio, 285 Kent, and Silent Barn) that survived by formalizing its model rather than gentrifying it.

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