Underground Arts

Underground Arts is a 650-capacity concert club in Philadelphia’s Spring Garden neighborhood, occupying 12,000 square feet in the basement of the Wolf Building. Its distinguishing proposition is a large industrial room beneath Callowhill Street: concrete and brick shape the acoustics, while two performance spaces and installations by Philadelphia visual artists keep the setting tied to its arts-first purpose. The calendar ranges across metal, electronic, pop, indie, alternative, rock, hip-hop and folk.

A basement built for performance

Architect and developer Gary Reuben and partner Gary Reisner bought the 170,000-square-foot Wolf Building in 1997. Reuben’s son used its basement for theater, and Sarah Sanford’s production of Appetite christened Underground Arts in May 2009. That first performance turned a dusty basement into a working arts space. In 2010, Reuben and Reisner received a $50,000 Creative Industry Workforce Grant, then cleared and developed the room as a 12,000-square-foot outlet for emerging artists. Its early program held theater, comedy, poetry, dance, visual art and music, and Underground Arts served as the official late-night bar of the 2012 Live Arts/Philly Fringe Festival. The venue’s concert identity grew from that wider performance ecosystem.

How the room plays now

Today, booking reaches local performers, national touring acts and artists on the rise, with live music at the center while theater and fashion shows remain part of the format. The main room is standing-first, fitting 650 people around a 22-by-20-foot stage with professional audio and lighting; it has a full bar and a satellite bar. A Black Box provides a second space, although sound overlap means the building presents one event at a time. Expect a close-floor club setting, booming bass response and a wide stage in front of the crowd.