Founded in 1973 by Flory Barnett with support from David Rockefeller, Sr. and Chase Manhattan Bank, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), and other local business and civic leaders, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) was built on the premise that artists were pillars of resilience and inspiration and therefore vital to New York City.

Our organization’s core mission included forging meaningful connections with individual artists, arts groups, public officials, community groups, property owners and developers, and other employers as well as stakeholders in the downtown and cultural landscapes at large.

Using public plazas, parks and atria, LMCC brought communities together by sponsoring free lunchtime concerts and evening performances on the plaza, installations in lobby windows, and outdoor sculpture exhibitions. LMCC grew with the Financial District, cultivating art and culture in and around the World Trade Center. Soon after our inception, we published a monthly calendar of area cultural programming, Downtown, that included local lectures, walking tours, concerts, and other myriad events.

By the end of the 1990s, we had not only moved our offices into the World Trade Center (WTC), we had transformed it into a cultural anchor: our programs now included World Views, which offered studio space to artists in the upper floors of the North Tower; Evening Stars, which brought free dance to the WTC Plaza; and exhibition spaces throughout the complex showcased the work of artists of all disciplines.

LMCC also expanded its reach boroughwide with Manhattan Arts Grants, where we regranted funding to local arts organizations and individual artists for diverse programs and presentations: Manhattan Community Arts Fund began in 1984; The Fund for Creative Communities began in 1998; and Creative Curricula began in 2003.

In these years, demand for LMCC’s programs among artists and audiences flourished, and in response, the organization grew in programmatic scope, community impact, and capacity.