Richard Yelle talks about NYEGW’s move from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Oral history interview with Richard Yelle by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, December 17, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:44.

Richard Yelle: We were trying desperately to stay in Manhattan—and we looked all over Manhattan, but most landlords, when they heard the word melting glass, and furnaces, and—there wasn’t for them. So we were extremely lucky to find the Strand Theatre in downtown Brooklyn. You know, it was a famous movie theater. The dome was so high that they were able to put three stories inside the dome. So BRIC, the Brooklyn Access Television, was on the second floor and we were on the third floor, which had 50 foot ceilings. And when we moved in, all of the metal straps that held up the plaster dome were still there. It was really raw space. And there was no HVAC and there was virtually nothing there except for 17,000 square foot of beautiful space. Thank goodness our board was pretty strong by then, and we had some major people on the board who actually knew how to raise money and had previous experience. We also had to do construction, and Tina was in charge of managing the construction. Jeff Beers—a long, long time Glass Workshop person, who’s an architect, designed the space. And we had a board member, he was a builder of malls, and one of his most famous malls was Short Hills in New Jersey, which is gigantic. So he would meet with Tina, with the construction workers and the contractors, so that they couldn’t rip us off too much. And you know, they couldn’t get away with a lot of shenanigans, which was very common in New York City at the time. So we actually struggled to get permits and everything because nobody knew what a glass furnace was [laughs] cause there wasn’t any. So there was no prior knowledge that the building department could draw on. So long story short, because of our board, people like Cynthia Manocherian and Carl Pforzheimer, and many others, we are able to raise two million dollars, and get through the construction, and we opened.