A 24 hour laundromat under the 7 train at 3 a.m.: a horseshoe of washers and stacked dryers turning behind round glass, folding tables down the middle, fluorescent light on the sidewalk, the works on enamel panels above the machines.
The coin laundromat is a New York institution: the place where a new arrival first pays their own way, and where the night shift folds its clothes at three in the morning. The city licenses every one of them through the Department of Consumer Affairs. In February 2015 there were 2,570 licensed coin operated laundries in the five boroughs, a 10 percent drop from a decade earlier. Rising retail rents from Harlem to SoHo had pushed longtime laundromats out of Manhattan, which counted fewer than 400, into the outer boroughs where costs are lower.
Source · Crain's New York Business ↗
The yellow and red LAVANDERIA sign, the OPEN 24 HOURS neon in the window, the horseshoe of front loaders with drums turning, rolling wire baskets, orange plastic chairs at the window, the change machine and the soap vending wall, the TV on its bracket, the el across the avenue. Mood: three in the morning. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.