The spring of 2007 saw the closing of the last two remaining roller skating rinks in New York City. It marked the end of an era for roller disco, a genre of roller-skating that claims to have been born at the Empire Roller Skating Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Shortly before the Empire closed in April, the Roxy also closed its doors. The Roxy was the last roller skating rink in Manhattan,...
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The spring of 2007 saw the closing of the last two remaining roller skating rinks in New York City. It marked the end of an era for roller disco, a genre of roller-skating that claims to have been born at the Empire Roller Skating Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Shortly before the Empire closed in April, the Roxy also closed its doors. The Roxy was the last roller skating rink in Manhattan, as well as being the so-called birthplace of hip-hop, and a New York club institution.

Rising real estate prices have been blamed as the cause for the rinks' closing, and they stand out as particularly tragic losses in the City's current development boom - the Empire particularly so, which was converted to a storage facility, a more profitable business. Neither of the rinks qualified as architectural landmarks, but they did qualify as major institutions to the communities that they brought together, and their disappearance serves as a clear indicator of the homogenization of the City's inimitable character.

These images capture the last skates of both the Empire and the Roxy and attempt to preserve their memory by documenting the last hours of their existence.
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