Presenting our newest location Extra Butter - Queens.
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Extra Butter PS1
Long Island City, NY
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Our new shop in Queens is housed in the iconic PS1 building in Long Island City, also home to MoMA PS1. The PS1 building was built in 1892 when Queens was not yet a NYC borough. LIC was actually its own municipality in the County of Queens till the consolidation of New York City in 1898.
The beautiful terra cotta Romanesque structure had cost a fortune to build and was adorned with ornate details such as gargoyles, towers and turrets. The building served as LIC's First Ward School and later became Public School 1 (PS1) . The school closed its doors in 1962 and sat idle for more than a decade.
In the 70s, art curator Alana Heiss visited the dilapidated building and saw it as a perfect venue to stage exhibits.
Heiss, who came to New York City in the late 1960s, had a reputation for transforming old and funky spaces into dramatic staging grounds for contemporary and experimental art.
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NYC of the 1970s was bleak and financially depressed with shuttered stores and abandoned warehouses. Nonetheless, according to Heiss, it was also an unusually idealistic and fertile period for artists. Government, she said, believed that it had the responsibility to offer citizens of all different origins and income levels the opportunity to pursue the arts.*
And with that conviction, she established the PS1 Contemporary Art Center in 1976. PS1 became a studio, performance, and exhibition space for an artistic movement flourishing in NYC. An expansion in the mid-90s and partnership with the Museum of Modern Art in 2000 cemented the location as a cultural hub for creatives in Queens and around the world.
With programs such as the Young Architects Program and Warm Up summer music series, MoMA PS1 empowers creatives across the artistic spectrum - from installation artists like James Turrell to hip hop icons like Afrika Bambaataa.
Extra Butter is proud to be a part of this building's rich history and look forward to supporting the artistic heritage of PS1 and LIC through its own unique brand lens to inspire and engage creatives in the community.
