With five new gallery spaces opening in Tribeca on September 6, two others joining the neighborhood this past summer, and at least three more rumored to be putting down stakes next year, the Triangle Below Canal Street has emerged as New York’s hottest destination for art.

The phenomenal success of the High Line and the rapid expansion of luxury living around it has sent Chelsea real estate prices through the roof. Many galleries, whose leases are coming up for renewal, are being hit with big dollar increases so they’re looking for properties elsewhere. The Upper East Side is perhaps the best address for access to collectors, but even the largest spaces uptown pale in comparison to Chelsea’s cavernous warehouse structures. The Lower East Side galleries—with a few exceptions—are mostly storefront spaces.

After a slow start—beginning with the migration of Alexander and Bonin from Chelsea in 2016 and Bortolami in 2017, followed by the launch of Ortuzar Projects, founded by private dealer and former David Zwirner partner Ales Ortuzar in 2018—savvy gallerists are now viewing Tribeca as one of the trendiest neighborhoods in the city to open shop.

“Tribeca spaces have everything a contemporary art gallery needs,” the art worlds go-to architect Markus Dochantschi told Galerie during a walkthrough of the new Andrew Kreps Gallery at 22 Cortlandt Alley, which he was tapped to design. “Because the buildings were once warehouses, the spaces have fantastic proportions with great ceiling heights and floors that can support a lot of weight. Over the past 20 years, Tribeca has become an affluent residential area, which is why it will succeed in attracting more galleries.”

Two of the other new Tribeca galleries have also hired architectural firms to design their spaces, with James Cohan at 48 Walker Street enlisting HS2 Architecture and CANADA at 60 Lispenard Street working with Common Room. Nearby, the founder of Monica King Contemporary designed her own new gallery at 39 Lispenard Street and Kaufmann Repetto simply made alterations to its 55 Walker Street space, which had previously been the home of Artists Space and, more recently, Andrew Kreps Gallery’s temporary quarters.

These five galleries—along with Chart at 74 Franklin Street and Denny Dimin Gallery at 39 Lispenard Street, which respectively landed in the neighborhood in May and July—join a growing community of Tribeca art and design outposts, including The Journal Gallery, Kerry Schuss, PAGE (NYC), Patrick Parrish, Postmasters, Queer Thoughts, and R & Company, which opened its Franklin Street gallery in 2000 and another space on White Street in 2018.

Mark your calendars for the September 6 launch of the area’s newest galleries and read on for a preview of the inaugural shows.

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