Freedom of the Press belongs to those who own one.
A. J. Liebling
In 1967 New York City’s multiple dwelling law was changed for the late 19th century building at 799 Greenwich Street to allow artists to live and have studio space in the same loft. Bought at auction by the J.M. Kaplan Fund it was converted by the Foundation and sold at cost to visual artists with low to modest incomes. It was such a successful project that when the AT&T building became available on West Street it was bought by the Kaplan Fund, renamed Westbeth and converted for the use of visual, performing, and literary artists working in all types of media. The neighborhood then was by and large a low income community and redlined by the commercial banks. Although some artists had lived in the building before the conversion they were doing so illegally. Among the first tenants to move in after the conversion were Marcelo Bonevardi and his family, Nancy Holt and her husband Robert Smithson, Cora Kelly Ward, Jane Braswell, Ruth Richards, Hugo Weber, Bertha Case and her daughter Barbara Peart, Bradford Graves and his wife Verna Gillis.
The fourth floor loft where we lived was 750 square feet. Our bedrooms were separated from the rest of the loft by bookcases and dressers. There wasn’t very much privacy. We lived with close to a hundred free flying cockatiels, a blue crown, an African grey, and an Amazon parrot. We also shared the space with a dog, two turtles, and a rabbit brought home from summer camp.
I spent most of the day visiting multiple sites, working with students, collecting their work. At the loft Barbara typeset using a hand letter press or an electric typewriter. We leased a photocopier to print, and assembled the publications by hand. By 1989, the Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players had become a small computer based desktop publisher.
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