Beloved UES Youth Group Facing Eviction From Park Avenue Armory

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Residents are rallying around the Knickerbocker Greys, as the venerated youth after-school group faces eviction from the Upper East Side armory it has called home for more than a century.

Founded in 1881, the Greys are something of a vestige of old New York, working to instill discipline through drill sessions, marches and community work. Since 1902, they have occupied a small space in the Park Avenue Armory near East 67th Street, where uniformed kids hold two-hour drills each Tuesday on the building's second and third floors.

Earlier this year, however, the nonprofit conservancy that controls the armory told the Greys that they were being evicted from their 800-square-foot space, which they would need to vacate by June 1, the Greys' board president Adrienne Rogatnick told a Community Board 8 committee on Thursday.

Rebecca Robertson, who heads Park Avenue Armory Conservancy, told the community board that the armory is "bursting at the seams," with a full slate of arts events and other programs taking up nearly all of the 194,000-square-foot building. With upcoming renovations slated to reduce the available space even further, it became untenable to let the Greys keep using the Armory without a lease, Robertson said.

"The time has come now for the Greys to find a permanent home," Robertson said Thursday.

But the Greys say the conservancy has no right to evict them because it does not even own the Armory — rather, it rents the building from the State of New York, which granted the 99-year-lease in 2006 under the promise that the conservancy would spruce up the neglected facility.

"We’ve been there for 120 years. The state is the landlord and the conservancy doesn’t have the right to evict us," Rogatnick said Thursday. "Our blood's in the building."

With nearly 200 people joining the Zoom call, Thursday's meeting broke attendance records for CB8's youth committee, as dozens of current and former participants in the Knickerbocker Greys decried the possibility of displacement.

"For the first time in my life I actually look forward to Tuesdays which is our drill days," said Max Philips, a youngster now enrolled in the Greys, who said his school grades have improved since he joined.

Murphy Bright, a major in the U.S. Marine Corps, said he joined the Greys as a child growing up on the Upper East Side, where he struggled with dyslexia and felt "lost."

"They taught me discipline, leadership, and more importantly, giving back to the community," Bright said.

While the armory conservancy has found the Greys another suitable space at the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem, leaders of the youth group said that facility is much too far away to be accessible to their families.

Also in attendance Thursday was City Councilmember Julie Menin, who wrote her own letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul last week, asking the state to grant the Greys their own lease at the armory.

"It just seems to me that with 194,000 square feet of space, what the Greys are asking for is literally two hours a week to utilize space. That’s a de minimis ask," Menin said.

Hochul's office has acknowledged receipt of the letter but has not responded, a spokesperson for Menin said. The governor's office did not immediately respond to Patch's request for comment on Tuesday.