Irving Plaza

Irving Plaza is a 1,025-personballroom-style music venue at 17 Irving Place and East 15th Street in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The three-level auditorium has served as a Polish Army veterans' headquarters, a swing music ballroom, a rock venue and has hosted church services as well. It is featured on the Complex City Guide list of "50 Best Concert Venues of America".

Polish Army veterans

In 1948 the building was purchased by the Polish Army Veterans of America District 2 and turned into a Polish-American community center. Generals and other distinguished Poles graced its stage including, in 1976, the future Pope John Paul II.

Rock venue

Thirty years later, in 1978, the hall was converted to a rock music venue by future Peppermint Lounge promoters Tom Goodkind and Frank Roccio, who after a year, began to share promotional efforts with a "Club 57" crew headed by Jane Friedman and Louis Tropia. Goodkind and Roccio brought in acts such as the B-52s, Talking Heads, the Ramones and, with Friedman and Tropia, a wealth of British bands, establishing the venue as a premier American location for punk and new wave.