Core77

End of an Era for NYC Artists & Designers: Pearl Paint Closes

By Rain Noe - April 22, 2014

in Object Culture

And now for a bit of local news. Pearl Paint, NYC's famed art supply superstore and one of the original supply sources on Core77 version 1.0, has closed after more than 80 years in business.

This signifies the demise, for industrial design students at Pratt Institute in particular, of Canal Street as a destination for supplies; in the '90s we'd travel to Industrial Plastics on Canal & Greene, Space Surplus Metals around the corner on Church, and cap it off with a trip to Pearl for everything the prior two stores didn't have. Now all three outfits are gone.

Longtime Pearl patrons will remember the 12,000 square feet of art supplies spread over five floors, the endless stairs, the knowledgeable movie-extra-New-Yorker clerks who knew exactly which shelf the 0.3mm Rapidographs, vellum rolls and wire clay modeling tools were located on. But in the past decade the store had grown into a shadow of its former self, with stock steadily dwindling down and a failed drafting furniture annex dying out. For NYC design school grads who often attended our first job interviews carrying work in portfolio cases purchased from Pearl, it was a depressing sight.

While the next generation of New York's art students no longer have much reason to travel to Canal, those that do will find a newish Utrecht art supply store on nearby Lafayette & Howard taking up Pearl's slack. The selection is comprehensive if smaller, and at just one level there's little danger you'll topple down a staircase and break your ArtBin.

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jacob jackson

10 years ago

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I think most of the great artists bought paint from that store. It's sad to see big businesses like Pearl close in the art supply space. Now the best alternative would be online stores like JerrysArtarama.com - Great prices, deals and the seem like they really care about artists. Any other great recommendations?
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Robin Bugbee

10 years ago

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Really sad. Options for artists are becoming very limited in NYC as it becomes a place where it is just too expensive for artists to live any longer. Independent retail and the businesses needed by the middle class are unfortunately doomed. As much as I still love New York it has become a giant shopping mall for the wealthy. One only need to look at what has become of the West Village to see all of the chain designer shops that have swallowed the uniqueness of what used to be there.
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