Correcting A Museum Error

 I wrote and e-mailed the following letter to Stephen Petrus, the curator of the "Folk City" exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York on August 19, 2015. This exhibition focuses on the folk music scene in New York in the 1950s and 1960s:

Stephen Petrus, Ph.D
Museum of the City of New York
1220 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10029

Dear Mr. Petrus:

In the "Mapping Folk City,1935-1965" section of the "Folk City" exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, I noticed a factual error. The address of Pacifica radio station WBAI was given as 359 East 62nd Street, which was an old church building. As someone who became involved with WBAI in the late '60s, I can tell you that the station did not move to that location until sometime in the mid to late '70s.

In 1968 when I produced two half-hour black history programs, WBAI was located in a cramped town house on East 39th Street, near Park Avenue. From there it relocated (very briefly) to 62nd Street, then to 505 8th Avenue, and finally to 120 Wall Street (alas an address I never got to visit).

The station is now in Brooklyn after operating for several months out of City College's campus station WHCR [in Harlem] due to its evacuation from the Wall Street area after experiencing the wrath of Hurricane Sandy.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

P.S. A heartfelt thank you for putting together such a beautiful and informative exhibition. I hope a lot of people get to see it before it closes next year.

Note: The blog post about the "Folk City" exhibition was published on August 1, 2015.