The Record
History of
the Room
Fifty-four years on Fourteenth Street
Before the Bells
A gym above a storefront
The Gramercy Gym was never a grand place. It was a long second-floor room at 116 East 14th Street, near the corner of Irving Place, reached by a narrow stairway that ran up between two storefronts. The street below sold coffee and fruit and newspapers. Above it, men learned to fight.
It opened in 1939 under Constantine “Cus” D'Amato, a New York trainer of Italian descent with a reputation for two things: he would not lie, and he would not quit on a fighter. He ran the room for the better part of three decades. In that time it became, by common agreement, one of the most important classrooms in the sport.
What made it important was not the equipment. It was the method taught inside it.
What Was Taught
Use the fear, don't obey it
D'Amato's teaching rested on an uncomfortable idea: that the fight is not really between two men but between a man and his own fear. Fear, he said, is the same sensation in the hero and the coward. The difference is what you do with it. The coward obeys it. The fighter uses it.
The hero and the coward both feel the same thing. The hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, only it's channeled in a different direction.
From that came everything else: the discipline of the stance, the economy of motion, the insistence on thinking while being hit. He taught men to be still inside a storm. And he did it in one room, on one street, for men who mostly had nothing else.
It is worth saying plainly: this was not only a place that made champions. It was a place that made people. Many of the boxers who climbed those stairs never won a belt, and the plaque that once stood at 120 East 14th Street honours them anyway, calling them “champions in their own right.”
The Doors Open
Cus D'Amato opens the Gramercy Gym at 116 East 14th Street, two flights up from the street, at the corner of Irving Place.
A Method Takes Shape
D'Amato refines his teaching in the room: fear as the true opponent, economy of motion, and the discipline of thinking while under fire. Fighters come from all over the city to climb the stairs.
Patterson Wins the Title
Floyd Patterson, schooled in the Gramercy method, becomes the youngest man ever to win the world heavyweight championship.
Patterson Wins It Back
After losing the title, Patterson becomes the first man in history to regain the world heavyweight championship — a fighter taught not to obey his fear.
Torres Takes the Light Heavyweights
José Torres, another product of the room, wins the world light heavyweight championship. He would later become a writer and a teacher in his own right.
The Gym Changes Hands
D'Amato eventually sells the gym. The room keeps working, under new ownership, in the same old way. The stairs still creak.
Al Gavin's Corner
The gym passes into the hands of Al Gavin, one of the finest corner men in the business, and his partner Bob Jackson. The standard holds. A young man from a Star Trek convention learns to fight here, and in 1986 climbs through the ropes at the New York City Golden Gloves finals at Madison Square Garden.
The Building Comes Down
After more than half a century, the Gramercy Gym is demolished. The room on the second floor is gone. Shortly afterwards, that stretch of Fourteenth Street is renamed Cus D'Amato Way.
The Standard Isn't Demolished
The plaque that once stood at 120 East 14th Street is gone too — removed when the storefront changed hands. But the men who learned on those stairs went on to open gyms of their own. Trinity Boxing Club is one of them.
“For more than half a century, the Gramercy Gym stood on this site. Legendary boxing trainer and teacher, Cus D'Amato, trained world champions Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres along with countless other boxers who were champions in their own right.”
Historical marker · 120 East 14th Street · erected by P.C. Richard and SonSee the room.
Photographs from the floor, the corner, and the street outside.
Open the Gallery