A building is empty of purpose‌ if it is not filled with programs and people.
A building is empty of purpose‌ if it is not filled with programs and people.
A HOME FOR CITY OF ASYLUM’S PROGRAMS: THE MASONIC BUILDING REDEVELOPMENT & CITY OF ASYLUM @ ALPHABET CITY
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he Masonic Building project is the launch pad for City of Asylum’s future. It is a $12.5 million project that redevelops a longabandoned historic building… and brings it to life as a hub for Pittsburgh’s literary arts, music, artistic experimentation, and global culture. The project includes eight income-generating apartments on the upper floors—two affordable—and City of Asylum @ Alphabet City on the ground floor and basement levels. City of Asylum @ Alphabet City offers us a year-round venue to program. Its flexible, acoustically-tuned performance space will be able to accommodate groups as
small as 10 and as large as 225 for readings, small-scale music, performances, and workshops, all with automated recording and broadcast capabilities. In addition, City of Asylum @ Alphabet City will include our offices, a bookstore, and Casellula Cheese & Wine Cafe of New York, a highly-rated destination quality restaurant that is also priced to be affordable. So you will be able to have dinner (for dinner only or along with a performance), listen to music in a club-setting, or stay for drinks after a reading.
FIRST FLOOR SHOPFRONT FROM THE BACK LOOKING OUT
“City of Asylum is already a wonderful North Side institution and I am thrilled at this next step in their evolution. This project will be key to the continued rebirth of the Federal North corridor, which is one of the key entryways not only to the North Side but the city as a whole.” BILL PEDUTO MAYOR OF PITTSBURGH
TOM ROBERTS PLAYS FOR AN ALPHABET CITY EVENT
THE NEXT STEP, IN A HISTORY OF GROWTH AND TRANFORMATIVE IMPACT
“City of Asylum @ Alphabet City will be the cultural and social hub of the community and will spur revitalization of the Federal North area.” KEVIN ACKLIN CHIEF OF STAFF TO MAYOR BILL PEDUTO AND CHAIRMAN OF THE URA
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can—on closed public streets, on vacant lots, in neighborhood gardens, and in our founders’ living room.
In 2005 we presented one program. In 2015, we presented more than one program a week, all of them free. Without a yearround, all-weather facility, we can only program catch-as-catch
City of Asylum @ Alphabet City establishes a permanent home for City of Asylum programming and the arts—as an economic and cultural engine—at the gateway to our community. In our first year of operation, we will present over 125 programs, and our economic impact, now about $2 million annually, is estimated by the Center for Community Development at Williams College to exceed $4 million annually and to create over 50 jobs once City of Asylum @ Alphabet City opens in the summer of 2016.
n 2004 a small group of Pittsburghers gathered to start City of Asylum. The plan was to provide a safe house for a writer exiled under threat of persecution. But the program took off in unexpected directions. Ten years later, City of Asylum has provided long-term sanctuary to five writers who were persecuted in their native countries and presented over 300 writers and musicians from 60 countries in free readings and concerts.
NOBLE LAUREATE WOLE SOYINKA’S SURPRISE ENTRANCE AT JAZZ POETRY CONCERT.
The Founding Member Fund was launched to make sure that City of Asylum Alphabet City is animated with great programs and filled
Before launching the Founding Member Fund, in the “quiet phase”
of our campaign, we raised $10.5 million—84% of our goal. The Founding Member Fund’s goal is to raise the remaining 16%, over the next three years. With your help, City of Asylum will continue to innovate, experiment, and connect Pittsburgh to the world. with people…not asset rich and operations poor. It is what City of Asylum needs to be: resilient and not at risk year-to-year. The Fund provides the stability for us to take creative risks and to continue showcasing global and underrepresented voices. ar too often, organizations lose their path in developing a building and are unable to translate dreams into sustainable success. The building remains empty of purpose.
For more information and to help ensure City of Asylum @ Alphabet City is filled with purpose, visit our website at www.cityofasylum.org or contact Adam Stokes at (412) 323-0278 or adamstokes@cityofasylumpittsburgh.org.
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“PITTSBURGH’S CITY OF ASYLUM.” THE ATLANTIC
$2,000,000 FOUNDING MEMBER FUND
“City of Asylum is about more than giving an exiled writer a place to live and work. It is about building a community around them that participates with the poetry, or art, or music that is being created in that living space.”
$10,500,000 $12,500,000 TOTAL
* Includes $600,000 gift that may be applied at COA’s discretion
$300,000 $300,000 EXILED WRITER PROGRAM
16% needed to meet goal
$30,000 $500,000 PROGRAMMING RESERVE FUND
84% of goal raised before Founding Member Campaign
$620,000* $1,100,000 PROGRAMMING
Reserve fund for writer emergencies and fluctuations in funding
$9,550,000 $10,600,000
For catalytic opportunities, long term commitments
To acquire, rehab, and outfit the Masonic
PURPOSE
In 2015, we also became the U.S. Headquarters for the International Cities of Refuge Network. The Director of the International Network called Pittsburgh the “model for the world.”
CAPITAL BUILDING
Because our programs are free and our outreach extensive, our audiences are among the most diverse in Pittsburgh. In an intimate space like Alphabet City— without barriers-to-access, where people feel welcome and at home—art is a personally transformative experience. And sharing the experience with others unlike
City of Asylum is one of a small number of organizations to have received the nation’s two most prestigious awards for transformative, arts-based community impact—from both ArtPlace and the National Endowment of the Arts “Our Town” program. We have also received national capacitybuilding support from the Ford Foundation and the Kresge Foundation to develop City of Asylum @ Alphabet City and expand the impact of our programs. RAISED
For example, after we purchased and shut down a nearby nuisance bar (now the site of City of Asylum @ Alphabet Reading Garden, a community park), crime on the adjacent blocks—17 major incidents in the prior two years— immediately stopped. The vacant houses on the block are all being redeveloped, and City of Asylum was recently advertised as a reason to buy a house for sale on the block.
yourself creates the understanding and empathy for, in the words of one audience member, “a vision of a possible future.”
GOAL
W
e are now recognized internationally as a model for creative placemaking, with wide-ranging impacts spanning economic development, cultural equity, and even public safety.
For core programming at Alphabet City
ALLEGHENY CITY CENTRAL ASSOCIATION
FOUNDING MEMBER FUND
A $12,500,000 Campaign for City of Asylum’s Future
“ City of Asylum is at the very heart of our neighborhood.”
“City of Asylum is about more than giving an exiled writer a place to live and work. It is about building a community around them that participates with the poetry, or art, or music that is being created in that living space.”
“PITTSBURGH’S CITY OF ASYLUM.” THE ATLANTIC