4. Silent Barn

Silent Barn Brooklyn Spaces Oriana Leckert by Walter Wlodarczyk 2Silent Barn. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk

Silent Barn was an early entrant into Brooklyn’s wild DIY music scene: it started in Ridgewood, Queens, in 2004, when the band Skeletons began putting on all-ages shows in the kitchen of the repurposed textile factory they lived in. The musical offerings were always inexpensive and extremely varied, from hardcore to hip-hop to chiptune, and the space was popular and well-loved. But in July 2011, the Department of Buildings ordered the residents of the Barn to vacate because they were illegally living in an indusrial space. Mere adys later, the building was ransacked and about $15,000 worth of equipment was destroyed or stolen.

That could have been the end, but instead the collective launched a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising $40,000 toward a new space…It took nearly two years for the collective to find a mixed-use space that was big enough for its growing community but in early 2013, Silent Barn 2.0 opened its doors in Bushwick.

Text excerpted from Brooklyn Spaces.