Boys' Club To Sell 119-Year-Old East Village Clubhouse

EAST VILLAGE, NY — The Boys' Club of New York is selling its East Village clubhouse after 119 years of offering a safe haven for boys in Lower Manhattan.

The Harriman Clubhouse building on Avenue A and 10th Street will continue to operate through June 2019 when it will be packed up and relocated to a smaller space in the area. Funds from the sale will go toward new programming in communities such as Brownsville, East New York and the South Bronx where there are fewer resources, a club official told Patch.

"The idea of the value of the building coupled with the dramatic changes to the Lower East Side and the East Village since our founding, seems to the board that we could use the money in places with greater need," said Alice Maggin, the club's director of communication. "This is not done lightly, a lot of discussion and a lot of thought went into this."

Boys' Club officials have been deliberating the move for years and will likely purchase or construct a new building in an underserved outer-borough community with money from the sale, according to Maggin.

"We don’t want to count our chickens before they hatch, but the idea would be to either buy a property or build a property," she said.

The seven-story, 50,000-square-foot Harriman building is named for the club's founder Edward Henry Harriman, who was a railroad executive. Launched in 1876, the club kicked off in another East Village space before moving into the Harriman site that was specifically built for the club in 1899 and opened its doors in 1901, said Maggin.

Today, the building is equipped with two gymnasiums, a swimming pool on the seventh floor and a rooftop space where a slew of athletic, music and art programs are offered to roughly 300 members, boys ages 7-to-21. Club officials have not begun talks with specific buyers yet, but aim to sell the space to a group with the community's needs in mind rather than a developer who would raze the structure.

"That building is built like a bomb shelter — thick walls of concrete and steel — if it were to be knocked down it would be hugely expensive," said Maggin. "It's a seven-story building with unique features, we're hoping that it could become something for the area."

As is, the space could lend itself well to an assisted living facility, a medical center or could be used by one of the universities in the area, explained Maggin.

"This building has been a part of the community for more than 100 years — we'd like to keep it that way," she said.

Photos courtesy of the Boys' Club of New York