An 1830s row house hosted the Beat poetry scene and later Sun Ra’s commune

Evidence

A few blocks down the street, just off Second Avenue, Sun Ra ruled a communal pad, the Sun Palace, that occupied the top two floors of a small three-story 1830s row house. The building had been the site of the Artist’s Studio that, as established by the African American painter George Nelson Preston, hosted poetry readings, including the February 1959 event memorialized in Fred McDarrah’s iconic photograph of Jack Kerouac, arms extended against a white curtain. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 889

Categorization

• XREF: One building serving multiple successive avant-garde functions (Beats, then Sun Ra’s commune) is a micro-demonstration of how cheap old architecture becomes reusable cultural infrastructure across decades — keyed to the reader’s inquiry.