I found this video from 2024 while searching for something else in my archives.
I stop and visit 105 Second Avenue, the site of Fillmore East every time I go to New York.
The East Village was not only ground zero for the Allman Brothers Band’s triumph at Bill Graham’s legendary venue, it was also my own introduction to New York City: December 1992.
New Yorkers have told me I caught the last of the wild and wonderful and untamed New York.1 I certainly agree. The New York I visited in 1992 was a like foreign country to me, particularly the area around Fillmore East.
In 1992, St. Marks Place was teeming with activity, on the stoops, in the shops, in the streets. Music was everywhere. So was weed and incense.
It was a legit 24/7 operation—the city that never sleeps. The things I witnessed in the wee hours of the morning are forever burned into my mind.
I must’ve walked by the Fillmore East building at least 100 times on that trip. It was long abandoned and nothing marked its significance. This was pre-internet, so I couldn’t just look it up.2
It was there all along.
I found this video from 2024 while searching for something else in my archives. It gives a good sense of the corner of Sixth Street and Second Avenue today.
This photo gives a view of the entire building.
Guests entered the auditorium under the marquee on Second Avenue. The black staircase at the top left of the photo is the building’s fire escape (which I talk about in the video).
The theatre had several lives after 1971, most notably as the famous gay nightclub The Saint, called “the Vatican of Disco.” In 1996 it was razed and replaced with apartments, although the original façade and lobby remained intact as a bank. In 2021, a small photo exhibition on the site’s history remained in the lobby.
The building was closed when I last visited in 2025.
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Lagniappe
VIDEO ESSAY: You got something you wanna say? Walk out on that stage and do it! Fillmore East, Bill Graham, and the Allman Brothers Band.
Will Hermes’s Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five years in New York that Changed Music Forever (2014) confirmed this as well.
And I didn’t even realize the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti and the Stones’ “Waiting on a Friend” video were not only shot right around the corner, it’s THE SAME BUILDING.
