Public Records

Public Records is a music venue and restaurant in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood. Founded in 2019, it operates five interconnected spaces including a listening room with embedded subwoofers, a plant-based restaurant, and a custom sound system designed by Devon Turnbull.

Sound is the organizing principle at Public Records: not as backdrop, but as the whole point. Founded in 2019 by Francis Harris, Shane Davis, and Erik VanderWal inside the former ASPCA headquarters on Butler Street in Gowanus, the campus has grown into five interlocking spaces: the Sound Room, with its custom Devon Turnbull / OJAS speaker system and Isonoe rotary mixer; the Atrium restaurant serving a fully plant-based menu; Cafe Public; UPSTAIRS, a listening lounge whose subwoofers are embedded directly into the walls; and The Nursery, an open-air plant nursery turned event space. The building's weathered surfaces were largely left intact: the bar finished in reclaimed travertine, the bones of the ASPCA building still readable beneath. The question Public Records keeps returning to is whether serious listening and serious living (food, ecology, community) can actually occupy the same room.