The Brick House (also known as The Brycc House) was a
social center
Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...
in
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
that was inspired by and modeled upon
ABC No Rio
ABC No Rio is a collectively-run non-profit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979-80 Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art gal ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. The Brycc House was organized in "Do-It-Yourself" (
DIY
"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and semi ...
) volunteer working groups to support community based projects. The project contained groups in areas that worked with art, music, bike repairs,
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
,
photography, internet access, comics, gardening, power saving practices, entrepreneurship, a lending library, a free clothing closet, and maintenance of the building.
Highlands
The Brycc House began as the Bardstown Road Youth Cultural Center (or BRYCC). The Brycc House was born in 1999 when Bill Allison, a candidate for Third Ward
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a Municipal government, municipal assembly or council in many Jurisdiction, jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council membe ...
, met with the staff of Brat Magazine to discuss their concerns about city government and youth issues.
One of the things that the Brat staff wanted was a youth-run youth center. The first BRYCC House building would be located on
Bardstown Road
Bardstown Road is a major road in Louisville, Kentucky. It is known as "Restaurant Row". It carries U.S. Route 31E and U.S. Route 150, from the intersection of Baxter Avenue (US 31E) and Broadway (US 150), southeast throug ...
(), the north end which is a major pedestrian-oriented commercial and residential district in Louisville. Allison agreed that this would be a good idea since many voters and constituents had expressed concerns about juveniles wandering the streets.
With different views on the topic about the juveniles it was decided by the staff to help give them a place for the youth.
Allison promised to get money for the center if the Brat staff would put together a proposal and form a nonprofit corporation to run the center.
Bill Allison would help the organization become nonprofit. BRYCC House Inc. (Bardstown Road Youth Cultural Center) was formed in 1999 and obtained IRS 501(c)(3) status shortly thereafter.
After several months of searching, the group found a building across from an old theater turned antique store on Bardstown Road in the
Highlands
Highland is a broad term for areas of higher elevation, such as a mountain range or mountainous plateau.
Highland, Highlands, or The Highlands, may also refer to:
Places Albania
* Dukagjin Highlands
Armenia
* Armenian Highlands
Australia
*Sou ...
neighborhood and opened the BRYCC House as a community
youth center
A youth center or youth centre, often called youth club, is a place where young people can meet and participate in a variety of activities, for example table football, association football (US soccer, UK football), basketball, table tennis, vid ...
.
BRYCC House successfully supported a variety of community projects: an Internet radio station; a lending library and zine collection; a visual arts studio with darkroom facilities; a public performance space for music, theater, film and more; a community computer lab and meeting space for community groups; host to regional and national conferences and much more.
Several community organizations shared office and work space, such as KFTC-Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and
Food Not Bombs
Food Not Bombs (FNB) is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, sharing free vegan and vegetarian food with others. The group believes that corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance ...
.
Even with the grant money from the city of Louisville and donations, paying the extraordinary rent was difficult and the center chose to put on music shows constantly for some time to meet expenses. Eventually the BRYCC House would close its doors in 2001 due to financial situations.
The organizers of the center would later consider attempting to purchase the location rather than paying rent, but then later decided to seek a new location.
Old Louisville
In late 2002 another building was purchased in the centrally located
Old Louisville
Old Louisville is a historic district and neighborhood in central Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is the third largest such district in the United States, and the largest preservation district featuring almost entirely Victorian architect ...
neighborhood ().
Following the purchase, the BRYCC House became known as just the Brick House Community Center since it was no longer located on Bardstown Road. After the opening one of the new key developments was the attraction of a variety of ages rather just young people.
Projects at the new building included a bicycle repair workshop, a
freeshop
Give-away shops, freeshops, free stores or swap shops are stores where all goods are free. They are similar to charity shops, with mostly second-hand items—only everything is available at no cost. Whether it is a book, a piece of furniture, ...
, an
infoshop
Infoshops are places in which people can access anarchist or autonomist ideas. They are often stand-alone projects, or can form part of a larger radical bookshop, archive, self-managed social centre or community centre. Typically, infoshops offer ...
and a meeting room.
There was also a radio station, periodic punk rock shows and political forums.
The first few weeks of reopening were difficult following several burglaries and thefts
[Louisville Music.com, Louisville Music News, Inc](_blank)
/ref> and the center never rebounded. At this point, the Board of Directors was almost completely different from the original founding board, and the building slowly fell into disrepair and disuse.[Leo Weekly](_blank)
By 2008, the venue was closed down and replaced by projects such as Skull Alley.
Conventions and other major events
As a part of their mission, the BRYCC House organized and hosted numerous large-scale events and conventions, including the Southern Girls Convention, Independent Festival of Education, IWW
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general ...
National Conference, Permanent Autonomous Zone
''T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone'' is a book by the anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) published in 1991 by Autonomedia and in 2011 by Pacific Publishing Studio (). It is composed of three sections, "Chaos: The Bro ...
PAZ Conference, Insomniacathon, Bike Bike SE featuring a community bike ride, an art show, a day for mountaintop removal
Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining at the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. Coal seams are extracted from a mountain by removing the land, or overburden, above the seams. Thi ...
awareness, a burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. show, and additional music concerts and plays.
References
Further reading
* Jason Koerne
"She's a BRYCC... House"
''Louisville Music News''
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brycc House, The
Culture of Louisville, Kentucky
Community centers in Kentucky
Buildings and structures in Louisville, Kentucky
Organizations established in 1999
1999 establishments in Kentucky
Defunct organizations based in Kentucky
Non-profit organizations based in Louisville, Kentucky
Infoshops