The places where cultural history was made in New York City have largely disappeared, and on Friday another institution was lost. Fazil’s Times Square Studio closed after 73 years as a ramshackle, homey rehearsal center that served as a mecca for everyone from movie stars to struggling tap, flamenco and Middle Eastern dancers.

Anne Tyus, a dancer who has been coming to the studio since the 1960s, shared goodbyes with Fazil Cengiz on Thursday. More Photos »
The rates were cheap. Even penniless artists could afford to rent there. In Studio A-4 — one of 14 rehearsal rooms in the three-floor center on Eighth Avenue, between 46th and 47th Streets in Clinton — dancers for many years paid 25 cents to spend an entire day working in the studio that was affectionately known as “the snake pit.”

“As many as could fit in,” said Fazil Cengiz (pronounced FAY-zil cen-GEEZ), a languid former owner and driver of taxis who bought the center in 1978. “The only rule was that you couldn’t bring a blanket and sleep there.”

Bill Irwin, the performance artist, was at Fazil’s on Thursday, its last day, rehearsing a new show for the Philadelphia Theater Company. “It’s very sad around here,” he said. “We’re all saying goodbye to each other.”

Mr. Irwin recalled that he fell in love with the unusual atmosphere of the place from the start. “I first walked up the stairs in 1978 or ’79, to take tap class with Brenda Bufalino,” he said. “The place was clouded with cigarette smoke. Some of the old tap dancers wouldn’t talk to each other.” They’d shut the studio door, Mr. Irwin said, so that other tappers would not steal their steps.

That studio, the spacious A-1, became known as the Copasetics Room, named after the ensemble of august tap stars, including Honi Coles and Charles Cook, who gathered there. It was the only studio with a working piano, though the old hoofers tended to sing out accompaniment.

Fazil’s was first known as Michael’s, owned by a former wrestler who taught acrobatics, tap and ballroom dance. No one seemed to know his last name, though he was immortalized in the 1948 film musical “Easter Parade” when Fred Astaire invites Judy Garland to run over to Michael’s and go through some steps. The center’s next owner was Jerry LeRoy, a vaudevillian whose specialty was tap dancing in ice skates, who renamed it after himself.

From the start, tap, flamenco and Middle Eastern dancers thronged there, as well as Broadway hoofers. By the late 1950s, Alvin Ailey was teaching there. Countless workshops and rehearsals for Broadway musicals were held at the studios. And a gangly youth named Savion Glover honed his tap style by jamming with members of the Copasetics and continued to rehearse there as his career flourished.

“The floors really had history,” said Jane Goldberg, a tap solo performer. “Those were the best-sounding floors in the city.”

Fazil’s was full of unexpected nooks and legends. “Upstairs there was a bar where there were belly dancing performances,” Ms. Goldberg said. “I don’t think it even had a name. You just knew about it.” An ancient seamstress named Chiquita who made affordable costumes for regulars in B-4, the center’s smallest room, was said to be the model for the Chiquita Banana girl.

Soledad Barrio, of Noche Flamenca, taught there, along with flamenco artists like Mariano Parra and Maria Alba, a fiery performer who taught the ballerina Gelsey Kirkland at Fazil’s.

“Everyone who comes from Spain goes to Fazil’s,” said Isabel Soler, a director of the Danzas Españolas company. “I got Maria Alba’s locker. Such ghosts there. I cried like a baby my last time there.”

Rap and hip-hop stars also found their way to Fazil’s, among them Missy Elliott. “She was such a sweetheart,” said Serpil Civan, the studios’ office manager, an ethnic dancer who is Mr. Cengiz’s sister.

Something of Fazil’s will live on in scenes in the movies filmed there, among them Woody Allen’s “Broadway Danny Rose” and Nick Castle’s “Tap.” Gregory Hines, a fixture at Fazil’s, modeled Sonny’s, the hoofers’ hangout in “Tap,” after Studio A-1. When Fazil’s received a move-out date from its landlord in July, work began on “And 5, 6, 7, 8 ...,” a documentary about the studio by the filmmaker Timur Civan, Ms. Civan’s son.

The building is one of several on the block slated for demolition to make way for new construction. Ms. Civan said the fine old maple floor in Studio A-1 would be lifted and cut into pieces, to be distributed to Fazil’s habitués as souvenirs. During a Christmas party last year that ran well into the next morning, Mr. Cengiz insisted that everyone sign the walls of Studio A-1 before leaving.

He discovered the place in 1971, when he began picking up Elena Lentini, a Middle Eastern dancer and his longtime companion, after rehearsals. Mr. Cengiz had grown up in a dancing family of Turkish descent and soon found himself taking tap and ballroom classes there.

That was the effect the studio had. “The kinds of people I met there opened my eyes to other worlds of dance,” Ms. Soler said.

Fazil’s still has a branch in Istanbul, in an old building where posters for Turkish movies were once printed. After exhaustive searching, Mr. Cengiz has found one possible new space in Manhattan, but he said it was not ideal. One problem has been the largely unearned reputation of flamenco and tap dancers for tearing up floors with their thundering feet.

“Where are the flamencos going to go?” he fretted. “Nobody wants them.”