The Manhattan Times

100 years later, historic Armory hits its stride

by Adam Garrett-Clark

It’s a striking image: high school athletes sprinting around an indoor track encircling a mound of cots and bedding from a 1,000-plus bed homeless shelter.

Such is the long and strange 100-year history of the armory on W. 168th Street and Ft. Washington Avenue.

The venue, which claims to be the busiest track and field facility in the world and is the physical home of the $8 million National Track and Field Hall of Fame and interactive museum, has over 500,000 visitors every year.

Its main hall, once a drill floor large enough to maneuver a tank, is now equipped with a four-sided Videotron and seating for over 4,000 spectators. The multi-roomed facilities house a number of nonprofit offices, including the Charles B. Rangel Technology Learning Center used for GED and computer courses. In total, according to Armory Foundation Executive Director Dr. Norbert Sander, over $30 million has gone into the building.

It’s come a long way since the 1980s when it was a no-man’s land riddled with broken windows, squatters and a rat infestation.

Sprint to Nov. 2009 when it was the site of the Bug Off pest control convention, considered the largest extermination gathering in the country. The renovated site is now a nationwide model to other armories that are faced with the challenge of making productive use of their massive spaces.

Graduations, galas and television shows rent out the space throughout the year. Ydanis Rodriguez plans to fill the venue with over 3,000 supporters for his inauguration to City Council.

“It’s a busy place,” said Rita Finkel, the Armory Foundation’s Director of Business Development. 

For runners, the place has continued to serve as a Mecca. Over 125 track meets are held in the Armory annually. It’s an activity that has endured in the building throughout its history.

The building’s first cornerstone was placed in 1909 when it was built for the 22nd Regiment. The first track meet there was recorded in 1914.

Dr. Sander, who is the only New Yorker to win the New York Marathon, remembers what it was like to run on the Armory’s track when he was in high school in the mid 1950s. At that time everyone had to pay a quarter to enter the facility. Now adult runners pay a flat fee of $300 for access to the track during the indoor running season. A general one-day entrance fee to watch an event or explore the museum is $5.

“It always was a running place,” Sander said, citing numerous track events through the decades up until the 1980s.

Originally, the track floor was made up of unforgiving wood, maybe seven inches thick. With the rubber shoes of the day, the surface could get very slippery, Sander remembers. “Sometimes you didn’t make the turn and you went flying,” he said, “and that’s when you would get floor burn.”

The youth of his day, he wagers, were just as fast as kids today but now times are faster because of improved equipment and conditions.

“The kids today have the track and the shoes and everything going for them,” he said.

Indeed, the current track is called the fastest in the world, a destination for athletes looking to record their best times. Its Italian engineered surface and banked corners have led to some of the best recorded times in the sport, according to Dwayne Burnett, the Commissioner of Track and Field for New York City high schools.

But the impressive facilities almost never were.

In the 1980s to respond to a growing homeless problem in the city, Mayor Ed Koch converted the city’s armories into shelters.

“All the high schools didn’t have the power to fight back,” Sander said. “They just accepted it.”

Yet with no where else to go, schools continued to run on the track in the colder months, the shelter beds were just moved out of the way during the day. The unlikely pairing continued up to the late 1980s until the conditions in the building and lack of safety for the children became too much to bear, Sander said. The building became solely a shelter for nearly a decade. 

It took Dr. Sander and a group of running enthusiasts and politicians to lobby the city for nearly three years to give the armory back to runners. In 1993 Mayor Koch handed Sander the keys and renovations began. The homeless shelter was scaled back in size and moved to the first floor of the building with a separate entrance on W. 168th Street, where it is now run by a separate nonprofit called Project Renewal.

The current relationship between the track and shelter is now akin to two apartments sharing the same building, Sander said.