By Albert Amateau
The residents, founders and friends of Westbeth on Monday celebrated the 40th anniversary of the artists’ living-and-studio complex that was created from the old Bell Laboratories on the western edge of the Village. In a twofer, they also feted the complex’s approval, last December, for listing on the State and National Register of Historic Places.
More than 100 people gathered in the plaza of the complex, which was carved out of more than a dozen vacant industrial buildings between West and Washington Sts. from Bethune to Bank Sts.
Joan K. Davidson, first president of the Westbeth board of directors, recalled how her father, founder of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, joined the late Roger Stevens, of the National Endowment for the Arts, to start what became the nation’s first public-private partnership to create affordable live-work spaces for artists.
Richard Meier, the prize-winning architect, recalled how he was presented with the enormous challenge in 1967 to draw plans for the unprecedented conversion.
“It was great, but it was incredibly difficult,” Meier said. “We had to finish the drawings in nine months to show the city how it could be done. We should have had two years to do it.”
Carl Stein, an architect and former chairperson of the Westbeth board, said the project, which took shape during Mayor John Lindsay’s administration, paved the way for similar project across the nation.
The original idea was that artists would have subsidized living-and-work space in the complex for two years, then move on and make room for others, Meier recalled. He asked for a show of hands of Westbeth residents who had been there for more than two years, and it looked unanimous.
“Well, it’s really a great place and you’re forgiven,” he said. Indeed, many Westbeth residents have lived there for more than 10 years.
Steve Neil, executive director of Westbeth, and George Cominskie, president of the Westbeth Artists Residents Council, also spoke at the celebration.
Congressmember Jerrold Nadler and Robert Tierney, chairperson of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, paid tribute to the complex’s founders and the artist-residents past and present of Westbeth. In addition to its recent listing on the State and National Register of Historic Places, Westbeth is now also being considered by the L.P.C. for landmark status protection.
“It is an L.P.C. chairman’s dream come true, with its incredible history and architecture. It’s truly special,” Tierney said of Westbeth, predicting that it would be designated a landmark this year.
