Pratt Center Awarded 2026 Nightlife Grant to Create New Data and Mapping Project on NYC Nightlife Spaces

New York City has played a pivotal role in the development of modern music. Underground scenes throughout the city–found in cafes, lofts, vacant warehouses, clubs, and other nightlife spaces–developed and grew into a global phenomenon.

These spaces have served as "third places," for many years, but the dramatic rise in cost of living has greatly impacted the ability of nightlife in the city to thrive. Manhattan, once the epicenter of New York nightlife, is an example of how these factors have greatly shaped NYC today. There are not nearly as many large-scale nightlife spaces in Manhattan as there once were, and many now regard Bushwick as the main club corridor in New York City.

Pratt Center is excited to share that it has been awarded a 2026 Nightlife Grant by @nycnightlifgov and @nycsmallbiz to support new data tools that will illustrate this change overtime, mapping nightlife spaces in Manhattan from the 1980s to the present.

Our hope is that future iterations of the map can encompass every borough and help inform future planning that protects, not erases, NYC's nightlife. As part of this project, Pratt Center will also be unearthing stories of past nightlife spaces and their impact. We will also be receiving recommendations from the public of nightlife spaces to research at info@thisusedtobeaclub.com.