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A Look Back At Flushing Town Hall's History, Saved By Two Women In The '80s

Oriana Leckert

Published Aug 20, 2019

Modified Aug 20, 2019

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Oriana Leckert

Published Aug 20, 2019

Modified Aug 20, 2019

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New York is a city of palimpsests, but few buildings have lived as many lives as the Flushing Town Hall, which was built before Queens was even part of New York City. Over its 157 years, the stately building has held everything from military galas to vaudeville performances to city prisoners. It was even the Department of Sanitation's headquarters for a time. And then it was nearly destroyed by urban decay.

According to the NY Times, local resident Stephen Phillips "decided he wanted to restore it and turn it into a dinner theater" in the 1970s. He told the paper, "At first there was some opposition. Some people wanted to turn it into a museum, but this was in the middle of New York's financial crisis and there was simply no money."

After receiving approval for his plans from the Board of Estimate, he signed a 30‐year lease with the city, spent half a million dollars restoring it, and reopened the place in 1976 as a 300-seat theater with a restaurant and bar downstairs. Peter, Paul & Mary performed in June of that year.

By 1980 Phillips bailed, and by 1989 the building was once again deteriorating. This time it was truly saved, however, by two women, including the first female borough president of Queens, Claire Schulman, and Jo-Ann Jones, who helmed the then-brand new Flushing Council for Culture & the Arts, which has acted as its steward ever since.

"Flushing Town Hall is very close to my heart," Schulman said earlier this year. "We rescued it from the private market and turned it into a wonderful community center."

That organization has spent decades bringing people together through global arts programming. “It’s really in the fabric of the institution, bridging cultures through the arts,” Executive and Artistic Director Ellen Kodadek told Gothamist. And most of it has happened over the last 25 years at Flushing Town Hall.

Erected in 1862, Flushing Town Hall spent its first decades as the “focal point of every important town function,” as the Landmarks Preservation Commission put it. During the Civil War, the Romanesque Revival building housed fighting units and was used for farewell ceremonies as conscripted soldiers marched off to battle. By the turn of the century, it had become a performance venue for traveling theater, opera, and vaudeville shows, as well as important speeches. Frederick Douglass spoke there, as did Ulysses S. Grant. Teddy Roosevelt gave a presidential campaign speech from its front steps. And famed showman PT Barnum served as its impresario, with General Tom Thumb its star performer.

Once Queens was incorporated into New York City in 1898, Flushing Town Hall's primary use was once again civic functions. In 1904, a jail was added and the main hall was converted into a courtroom, which would remain its purpose for the next 60 years. It was also, briefly, a police precinct during the 1964 World’s Fair.

Then things started to take a turn. “We’ve heard rumors that for a period of time it was a house of ill repute,” Kodadek says, “but no one has been able to verify that.”

Schulman became Queens BP in 1986, and would come to be known for creating, developing, and funding cultural institutions. (“There were really no arts organizations in Queens before Claire,” says Kodadek.) Jones had started the Flushing Council for Culture & the Arts in 1979, using cross-cultural arts programming to bring together a neighborhood that was swiftly diversifying. Schulman wasn’t content to wait for a judge to allow the city to reclaim Flushing Town Hall, so she sent Jones to basically squat there until she could move the FCCA in legally. Over the next decade, Schulman allocated some $8 million for renovations. During those efforts, the original 19th-century proscenium was rediscovered—it had been sealed up and forgotten when the building was converted to a courthouse.

FCCA reopened Flushing Town Hall in 1993, eager to make it a home for the neighborhood’s myriad cultural heritages. One of the first and most lasting successes was the “Jazz Live” series, honoring Queens’ long legacy as the “home of jazz.” In 1998, Flushing Town Hall produced a map for self-guided tours along the Queens Jazz Trail—including onetime homes of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Scott Joplin, Dizzy Gillespie, Bix Beiderbecke, Charlie Mingus, and many more—and there are still monthly jazz jams in its gallery, led these days by the Astoria Big Band.

(Photo by Shawn Choi, courtesy of Flushing Town Hall)

Today, Flushing Town Hall is an award-winning performance venue and a Smithsonian Affiliate, presenting some 800 artists to nearly 60,000 audience members annually. The diversity of their offerings is remarkable: In 2018, across 143 public programs, they’ve brought in Peruvian and Mexican drummers, Inner Mongolian performance artists, Kathak and Bhangra dancers, Korean folk musicians, Nova Scotian puppeteers, Kabir rock musicians, Chinese theater troupes, Garifuna jazz musicians, and Colombian flower makers. Of their 150 educational programs last year, one-third of the performers came from overseas. They’ve assembled Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese cultural advisory committees, and recently the institution has begun working with members of the Matinecock tribe, Flushing’s original residents. “We represent all cultures equally and respectfully, and we have a lot of fun,” Kodadek says.

“Bringing people together by presenting arts and culture from around the world is the focus of every single thing we do,” she adds. That’s most apparent in their signature event: Global Mashups, which brings together ensembles from different countries for a three-part evening—first audience members are taught some culturally specific dance moves, then each band plays an individual set, and finally everyone comes together to jam, melding instruments and cultural traditions that have likely never before been combined.

It’s not so unlike the building itself: Even in its modern incarnation, many of its former lives remain just slightly visible, from the iron dressing-room doors, which once clanged shut on prison cells; to the shape of the theater, which once held a courtroom; to the gallery’s tin coffered ceiling, which did, and then didn’t, and now once again does preside over a jazz club.

Flushing Town Hall is located at 137-35 Northern Blvd in Queens

Correction: A previous version of this story did not include the 1970s reopening of Flushing Town Hall by Stephen Phillips.

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Oriana Leckert

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