The New York art world is full of origin stories, and some of them are true. One begins on a winter night on the Lower East Side, with a bolt cutter in a guitar case, a snipped lock and a guerrilla art show in an abandoned building.

ABC No Rio, the fiercely indie art center that arose from that 1979 break-in, became a haven for radical art and radical politics, squatters and hardcore punks. Over the decades, as other downtown spaces went under or were priced out, No Rio — perpetually on the verge of eviction or physical collapse — endured as a link to a New York that now exists mainly in memory.

Now, the center is getting a brand-new building, courtesy of $21 million from the city that for years fought to evict it. Construction began this summer on Rivington Street, in a neighborhood that has been completely transformed.

No Rio’s legacy is one of rat infestation and falling plaster, of wild music and anarchist leanings. In the complicated way of arts institutions, it is also a story made possible by decades of state and federal grant money, in which artists cracked open the door for gentrification.

On a recent afternoon at his East Village apartment, Steven Englander, the center’s director, addressed some of the twists in No Rio’s narrative. What does it mean for an oppositional arts organization to run on public money? And as the Lower East Side became prime real estate, what responsibility does No Rio bear for the low-income neighbors who have been displaced?

A mural outside Englander’s apartment, also in a former squat, shows three figures with Molotov cocktails and the stenciled text: “If yer gonna eat the rich, you gotta cook em first.”

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