AFTR/IMG · ROOM · THE-BANK · CONF NEEDS REVIEW
The Bank
Overview
New York City's defining goth and industrial club (occupying a former bank on the corner of Houston and Essex Streets) known for its pale limestone façade, recurring nights 'Albion' (Saturdays) and 'The Realm' (Fridays), and as a formative early-career stage for Nine Inch Nails; it closed on September 4, 1999 and reopened briefly as Element.
The Bank occupied a former bank building at the corner of East Houston and Essex Streets, its pale limestone façade the most architecturally distinctive element of a Lower East Side block not yet remade by 1990s gentrification. The space opened around 1989, an approximate date drawn from multiple accounts that describe roughly ten years of operation before its documented September 4, 1999 closing, and established itself as the anchor room for New York's goth and industrial subcultures, communities that had no other dedicated room of comparable size and consistency. The Bank's programming centered recurring themed nights: 'Albion,' a British-inflected goth and darkwave party on Saturdays, and 'The Realm' on Fridays, along with other evenings that drew from fetish, vampire, and BDSM subcultures, one documented event was a vampire-themed wedding. Nine Inch Nails and other acts central to the industrial-crossover moment of the early 1990s performed early shows at the venue; Madonna was among documented celebrity visitors. The closing on September 4, 1999 drew hundreds of habitués, and the NBC New York account described it as the end of a space that had been a decade-long anchor for communities defined against Chelsea's mainstream gay scene and the rave underground's more optimistic affect. The building subsequently reopened as Element, a more mainstream club. The 1989 opening and 1999 closing are drawn from published accounts and are approximate.
Oral histories & archival media
Archive plates
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