Jane Bruce discusses finding a new space for NYEGW. Oral history interview with Jane Bruce, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:43.

Jane Bruce: Yeah we—what happened was in 1986, late ‘86, there was a—in the city there was a big property boom. And our landlord, CP, his son wanted to build up, because Mulberry Street was the only building in Little Italy that was only two floors. Everything else was taller, and he could build up. So he—the landlord said, you know, ‘You’ve got to move.’ So we started in ‘87, I guess. No, we started in about ‘86, looking for buildings. We found—and it was pretty difficult because everything was so expensive; I mean, not like now, but back then it was all relative. And Tina went and looked—Tina Yelle who was the director at the time—she went and looked at a place up in Harlem and decided that it was too far. We looked in a number of places. And then we looked in Brooklyn and in the meantime a group of us—Jim Harmon, me, Tina Aufiero, James Horton, Geoff Isles, Chris Cosma, we sort of formed a committee and we figured out how much space we needed. And we decided the minimum we needed was 11,000 square feet. So we started looking for 11,000 square feet plus. And Tina found this building in Brooklyn that belonged to the city. And it was actually an old bowling alley, we found a bowling ball when we went and looked at it [clears throat]. So we sort of didn’t have much choice because it was a reasonable building, rent-wise and everything, because it was a city building. And everything else we were looking at was way too expensive. And so we spent the next few years—because we didn’t actually move in until ‘91, I guess we spent the next few years raising money, doing some work, running out of money, raising money, doing work, running out of money. I mean there was—it was an old theater, and for instance there was the—I think it’s called the flies, where they would hang all the scenery when it wasn’t being used. And it was all metal strapping. It cost a quarter of a million to have that removed. Just that. And also doing cons—at that time, doing construction in the city was not like doing construction now. It was very different and it was a lot of payback.