Westbeth Artists Housing is a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations in New York City. Its campus comprises the full city block bounded by West, Bethune, Washington and Bank Streets in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City; the complex is named for two of these streets, West and Bethune.
Westbeth is among the first examples of adaptive reuse of industrial buildings for artistic and residential use in the United States. It is a complex of 13 buildings in Manhattan’s West Village. The complex was originally the site of Bell Laboratories (1868–1966), one of the world’s most important industrial research centers and home to many inventions, including the vacuum tube, the condenser microphone, an early version of television, and the transistor. The complex was vacated by Bell Labs in the middle 1960s, and remained empty until the Westbeth project started later in the decade. Using seed money from the J.M. Kaplan Fund and help and encouragement from the National Council for the Arts (now the National Endowment for the Arts), an ambitious renovation project designed to create live-work spaces for 384 artists of all disciplines was initiated under the direction of developer Dixon Bain. The project was the first significant public commission of Richard Meier, who later won the Pritzker Prize for Architecture and who is still a significant figure in modern architecture. Westbeth opened in 1970 for artists, dancers, musicians, actors, writers and film makers.
In addition to its residential component, there are also large and small commercial spaces, performance spaces, and rehearsal and artists’ studios.
Westbeth was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 8, 2009, after the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), using funds from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, commissioned historic preservationist Andrew Dolkart to write a nominating report to list Westbeth on the State and National Register of Historic Places.
A host of notable residents have lived at Westbeth, among them being photographer Diane Arbus, who committed suicide in 1971 in her Westbeth apartment.
edited from Wikipedia
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