Couple Brings Tiny Oasis of Art to Chambers Street

Dionisio Cortes and Leticia Ortega, with gallery assistant Noemi Bilger, at Front on Chambers Street. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

For years, Dionisio Cortes and Leticia Ortega, longtime Tribeca residents and artists, had their eye on a piece of local real estate. Located on Chambers Street between a Chinese restaurant and an Army recruiting station, the modest storefront measured a mere 48 square feet. But oh, the possibilities!

“Every time we would look at the place, we would say, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have that little space and do something with it?’” Cortes recalled. (That happened often, since their home, studio and business are upstairs.) “The man who had it sold hats and gloves and umbrellas and one day we came downstairs and he was packing.”

The couple’s dream was to turn what was an easily overlooked storefront into an elegant art gallery.

This would be their second foray into showing art in Tribeca.

“Right after September 11th, when the whole neighborhood was devastated, we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice just to show artwork to try to cheer us up?’” Ortega said. So for three years they rented a ground floor window on Franklin Street where they displayed a different artist’s painting every month.

“But we always kept thinking about having a bigger space,” Ortega said. “When we moved here we thought, this is really huge. This has doors!”

In September, family and friends began pitching in to transform the dilapidated space. They tore up a 20-year-old carpet, ripped out sagging shelves, patched walls, painted, installed a new floor and hung a set of handsome glass doors and new awning with the word “Front,” the gallery’s name.

Their sons, Mauricio and Dionisio,  became their social media consultants, managing their Facebook page (“We don’t have a clue about how that thing works,” Dionisio said) and building a website for the gallery.

On opening night in October, they brought an upright piano down from their loft. As one of their son’s friends played, guests chatted on the sidewalk. 
The couple say that sales have been good. The gallery attracts a wide range of people, beckoning construction workers on Chambers Street, students, nannies wheeling their charges, local artists, late-night restaurantgoers who like to peer through the glass (the gallery’s light is always left on and the gates open). “This is sooo cute!” people often remark. But to his surprise, Cortes said, the gallery is also somewhat of a “curiosity.”

“People look at the awning and say, ‘What is this? What is this doing here?’” He has seen tourists pose in front of it for photos. One visitor took a picture of the gallery to send to a friend who had recently moved to Los Angeles and was complaining about life there. “These are the things you are missing about New York,” the man wrote.

Noemi Bilger, an artist who recently graduated from Cooper Union and lives on Warren Street with her parents, mans the gallery during the week. She enjoys seeing how people respond to the art as well as the space.

“They’re grabbed by it,” Bilger said. “It’s not like anything they ordinarily see on the street.”

Front, 118 Chambers St. Open  Tuesday to Friday, 2 to 7 p.m.