One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, New York City’s 92nd Street Y was founded as a community and performance center, an inclusive meeting place where people could go to make their lives more meaningful.
At the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, you’ll find folks doing exactly what you’d expect at a community center – swimming, playing basketball, creating. But did you know Groucho Marx used the gym here, and Martha Graham taught dance here?
As CEO Seth Pinsky tells it, the organization’s remarkable history stemmed from a simple mission: “The 92nd Street Y was founded 150 years ago by a group of German Jewish civic leaders who saw a large number of Eastern European Jews coming to the United States, and they felt that that population needed a home, a safe place. And they said, ‘Let’s create a Jewish version of the YMCA.'”
Everyone is welcome at 92NY. The historic Kaufmann Concert Hall is emblematic of this welcoming spirit. Truman Capote first read from “In Cold Blood” here, and Kurt Vonnegut debuted “Breakfast of Champions.” When Emma Lazarus wrote the words that gave voice to the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”), she was teaching English to Jewish immigrants at the 92nd Street Y.
