Download PDF Version Revolt Magazine, Volume 1 Issue No.4

Westbeth Artists' Housing, New York, A205 North Elevation. Arctitectural drawing courtesy of Eileen Marie Lynch Interiors.
WESTBETH
ARTISTS HOUSING
COMMUNITY
BY LENA VAZIFDAR
Westbeth Home to the Arts
Nearly every corner and hallway of Jon D’Orazio’s
studio is stacked with paintings. A series of largescale
iridescent circles on canvas in bright, almost
neon, color schemes are laid on top of each other
in rows and his walls are adorned with abstract
works he painted himself. The space, enclosed
in canvases, gives way to just enough room for a
couch and a coffee table. Jon has lived within the
walls of Manhattan’s Westbeth Home to the Arts
since its opening in 1970.
When it opened its doors nearly 43 years ago
as affordable housing for artists, the area of
Manhattan’s West Village on Bethune and
Washington streets was desolate. Now, posh
mothers and fathers with strollers take long
walks through its tree-lined boulevards. Designer
boutiques and coffee shops selling $5 lattes, pop
up one after the other next to quaint wine bars.
It’s easily one of the most coveted and expensive
areas of Manhattan to reside and Jon has been
there observing its transformation; watching it
go from one phase to the next slowly gentrifying
on every street corner over decades. When Jon
moved in, as a fresh-faced twenty something,
the Westside highway’s piers, which now boast
manicured lawns and bike trails, were just pier
after pier with miles of corrugated metal.
REVOLT
Magazine Number 4, 2013
“It was basically still a dead zone,” said Jon. “The
meat market was active just north of here and it
was scary. You didn’t want to walk around at night.
Washington street, which is really active now,
didn’t have any streetlights, and at night it was just
darkness.”
The meat market Jon speaks of is now the Meat
Packing District, a glitzy area for stiletto wearing
Manhattanites ready for champagne sipping at The
Standard Hotel or The Gansevoort and shopping at
Alexander McQueen and Diane Von Furstenberg.
The Highline, Manhattan’s architectural gem and
over ground park now intersects the area which
was once just meat factories and barren concrete.
There’s hardly a remnant of what it once was.
Westbeth’s building takes up the entire city block.
It used to be home to Bell Laboratories before
it was purchased to become affordable housing
for artists. Bell laboratories was the historic site
where the first talking movie and TV broadcast
was produced. With funding spearheaded by Joan
Davidson of the J.M. Kaplan Foundation and Roger
Stevens of the National Endowment of the Arts,
Westbeth was born.
Richard Meier was commissioned to renovate the
former Bell Laboratories in 1967, before he was
the Richard Meier that many know as the architect
behind large scale modern beauties like the Getty
Center in Los Angeles and the Barcelona Museum
of Contemporary Art. He went on to win the Pritzker
Prize in 1984, which is one of the highest honors
in the field. Meier said in an interview with the
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
that the idea of the live/work space was highly
unsual at the time of Westbeth’s creation. New
York City building code did not permit working
and living in the same space and so they had to
change the zoning in order to create something
that never existed before. The building code also
had to be changed to allow for working and living in
the same space.
Architect Richard Kaplan was a friend of Meier’s
and asked him to go with him to meet his father,
Jack Kaplan, as well as Roger Stevens, who was
head of the National Endowment of the Arts.
They walked through the buildings of the Bell
laboratories together to talk about ideas for the
site. Meier quickly became the man behind the
creation and it now stands as a testament to
his early work as well as a historic monument in
New York City. Westbeth was recently put under
consideration to become a landmark under NYC
Landmark laws and it has already been nominated
to the State Registrar of Historic Places and to the
National Registrar of historic Places.
Joan Davidson was also a major player in the
creation of Westbeth. Her father Jack Kaplan
turned the project over to her and it was
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