By Terry Stoller

Introduction

This project began with a boxful of paperwork from the tenants’ organizations in the early decades of Westbeth. Looking through the material—minutes of meetings, letters, bulletins, official documents—I decided to explore some of that history in light of Westbeth’s fiftieth anniversary. That meant finding more paperwork and speaking with longtime tenants who had experienced the history firsthand. My main interest was the contributions of the tenants in developing the Westbeth community and ensuring its survival. “Westbeth X Files” is an impressionistic view of the early decades (and perhaps some later ones) with an emphasis on oral history. As the source materials multiplied, it seemed best to present the X Files project as a serial, in chapters. Chapter 1 is about moving in and organizing groups for work and play.

For a brief history of how the building came to be converted from Bell Labs to artists housing, go to: https://westbeth.org/about/history/

Chapter 1

Moving In and Organizing Groups for Work and Play

Westbeth Opens to Artist Residents: The Intention

“Letter from the President,” Joan K. Davidson, to the residents

“A very warm welcome to all of you, the first, pioneering tenants of Westbeth, the largest living and working facility for artists in the world, and the only one in the United States: may your years here be productive and satisfying in every way. … It is our assumption that attractive, high-ceilinged rooms, abundant daylight, working plumbing, play space for children, reasonable security from eviction and rent-rise, and other ‘amenities’ provide a degree of dignity not to be found in discomfort. Only time will tell, I suppose.” [Westbeth News, April 1970]

Moving In

Ellen Rosen, painter: When we moved into Westbeth, beginning in 1969, everything that was finished was bright and clean, like new. The ceilings of the Bethune Street and West Street lobbies were painted neon reds, oranges, and pinks. So were the recesses around the compactor doors. Those colors were intense, perhaps a bit overwhelming but clearly made a statement. … We were actors, dancers, composers, photographers, musicians, poets, novelists and writers, painters, jewelers, etc. There was even a cookbook writer. How wonderful to live in a building where when someone asked you what you did, they were referring to your artistic discipline, not how you made your living.

Sue Binet, theatre/dance: It was spring 1970 when we [Sue and her husband, actor John Bottoms] moved in with our son, six months, and daughter, two years old. The neighboring apartments were homes to a concert pianist, a choreographer, a writer, a printmaker, a visual artist, and a musician. We were so fortunate as the rent was $120 a month and included heat and electric. What luck!

Doris Mare, designer/psychoanalytic administrator: My mother’s boss had found an article about artists housing being started, and we [Doris and her husband, artist Emil Mare] applied immediately, but apparently Emil told a bunch of his friends. They were all SVA [School of Visual Arts] students, and when we moved in here, it was like a dorm. We knew so many people, and [then] we had a little baby, and we had to say, you have to stop coming to the door. Give us a call; we’ll get together. For a couple of years, we were like having a salon. People would be coming over. People from outside of the building. There would be some socializing, but there was a lot of talk about art.

Christina Maile, visual artist, writer: It was like a ferment of things happening throughout the ’70-’75 years; because everyone was trying to figure out how to keep this going while at the same time having this anxiety that the building would fall under because of financial hardship. So it was really exciting, and the other exciting thing … was that you could do anything you wanted in your apartment. You could build a loft bed, you could take down a wall, you could move the refrigerator, you could add a second bathroom, you could modify the stairs, you could do anything. You didn’t have to ask management.

Opening week festival of the arts, May 25, 1970.

Early Tenant Artistic Collaborations

Christina Maile: Management wanted people to collaborate and get together, so that’s how the playwrights collective got together. I think the performers tried, and the painters eventually got the gallery. But the collective was part of people rising to the top and saying, I’ll organize this.

Dolores Walker, playwright: I invited people down to my apartment. It started in my apartment as the playwrights. There were male and female playwrights, including Harry Rosenzweig. … And we decided that we would start reading our plays aloud. … Harry had his piece read; I had some of mine read. … We got through that initial rush of material; it didn’t take that long. So we said, let’s start writing on different topics … and at a certain point … I said, I think we should write about rape. In my mind, I wasn’t thinking of just women. I was thinking of the rape of the economy, the whole thing. The next meeting, the women came back, and they all had material about women, and none of the men showed up. We read our material, and I said, you know, I think we have an evening. And I went over to what was then the Assembly Theatre [on Jane Street] … and I said, We have an evening of material, and we’d like to put it on. … And they gave us the 10 p.m., midweek. … We got publicity in the newspapers, and when we put it on, people were arriving in cabs, pounding on the door, trying to get a seat. And that is how we began. From there we became the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective.

Hugh Seidman, poet: We had a spring poetry-reading series and a fall poetry-workshop series in 1971. When the building first opened, there were many well-known artists here, not only well-known poets. The sculptor Carl Andre used to live here. Diane Arbus, the photographer, lived here. Anyway, Muriel Rukeyser lived here, and she got a grant of $2,000 for the Westbeth poets. I coordinated the grant. We decided we would have seven readings involving thirteen poets and eleven poets teaching eleven workshops open to the public. … Joel Oppenheimer was one of the poets in both series. He lived here then. … So we got this grant and, including myself, I chose the thirteen readers and the eleven people to run the workshops. I guess we advertised, and for the workshops, people came to our apartments. Each week they went to the apartment of a different poet. The group liked Joel Oppenheimer a lot, and after the series of workshops was over, they asked him if he would continue with them, and they would pay him—and he did do this. There was a poet Richard Zarro who lived in the building, who’s now deceased. He and I solicited the poems, and we put together the Westbeth anthology.

Contributing editors: Hugh Seidman, Richard A. Zarro. Art editor: Mel Fowler
Copyright © 1971 by Westbeth Corporation.

A Selection of the Early Art Exhibits

“12 Artists Join in an Uncommon Show,” Hilton Kramer, New York Times, March 18, 1971

“Twelve artists who live and work in Westbeth, the artists’ housing development in the West Village, have mounted a large exhibition of their recent work in four sizable galleries adjoining the building’s courtyard at 155 Bank Street, between Washington and West Streets. … The exhibition is, in effect, a series of 12 one-man shows, and thus suffers from a certain unevenness of quality. Yet, as a whole, it is an event of uncommon interest. I would rank it far higher in general artistic quality than either ‘The Structure of Color’ show, currently at the Whitney Museum, or the latest Guggenheim International at the Guggenheim Museum.”
[Artists discussed: Nassos Daphnis, Ron Walotsky, Athos Zacharias, James Kelly, Sonia Gechtoff, Joe Stefanelli, Eduardo Ramírez, Harry Koursaros, Peter Kredenser, David Seccombe, Giglio Dante, and Tania.]

Top row: J. Milder, P. Hanssen, P. Weichberger, R.P. Sullivan. Middle row: C. Burch, B. Kreloff. Bottom row: W. Anthony, N. Marshall. Courtesy of William Anthony.

Peter Schjeldahl reviewing “Maniacalaughter,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 1971

“Fetchingly if rather arbitrarily titled ‘Maniacalaughter,’ a group of 10 small one-man shows by resident artists was assembled recently in the building’s several ground-floor galleries, and the ensemble offers a good look at some results of the Westbeth experiment. The styles represented might for the most part be characterized as expressionist or neo-surrealist—whence, one supposes, the ‘crazy’ title derives—and the mediums include painting, drawing, collage, photo reproduction and neon sculpture.”

Exhibit calendar cover created by SuZen. Courtesy of Jon D’Orazio.

In May 1973, Artist Francia Tobacman Smith organized a women artists exhibition at Westbeth.

The show included Francia, Georgia Rave, Brenda Horowitz, Sheila Schwid, Anita Steckel, Camilla Chambers, Lucia Vernarelli, Gina Shamus, and Laura Meyers.

There Was Music

“Gil Evans, Jazz Pianist, Marks Birthday by Leading Big Band,” John S. Wilson, New York Times, May 17, 1972

“Gil Evans, the jazz pianist, composer, arranger and conductor who has provided Miles Davis with some of his most viable settings, celebrated his 60th birthday last weekend with his large band at the Westbeth Cabaret, 155 Bank Street, where the group is playing every Saturday and Sunday.”

And There Was Dance

In 1971, Ze’eva Cohen performed dances from her newly conceived solo repertory company at Westbeth, in the Cunningham Studio under the auspices of the Video Exchange. Her program included her own dance Cloud Song and Harriet by Peggy Cicierska, as well as Ze’eva’s Three Landscapes performed on her second program. She shared the two programs with June Lewis, a colleague from the West Coast.

Ze’eva Cohen, Dancer, Choreographer, Educator: When I moved in, I was an up-and-coming hot dancer. People were paying attention. The idea of performing a repertory as one woman was a big deal. So I was looking for places to perform, and I talked to the people upstairs from the Video Exchange in the Cunningham Studio. There was such a sense of welcoming. At that time, there was an incredible camaraderie and collaboration between avant-garde artists of different disciplines. So it was Merce Cunningham and his dance colleagues, John Cage and his music contemporaries, Robert Rauschenberg and his colleagues. And there was a major filmmaker who extended the idea of how dance should be filmed. That filmmaker, Charles Atlas, collaborated with Cunningham for many years. This was the era that people began to look at how to video and film dance from different angles—instead of a single camera with just a frontal view, meant for archival purposes. Those kinds of experiments were happening in the Cunningham Studio. The place was a hub of many far-thinking avant-garde artists. And I asked to have a concert there in 1971, and I was given the space to do the concert.

And there was another concert in ’73. I think ’73 was a collaboration of the early dancers at Westbeth. I performed James Waring’s 32 Variations in C Minor. James Waring was a member of the Judson Memorial Church movement. That’s the place where the postmodern dancers were working, and a lot of artists from different disciplines were there. Merce, who was both distanced and adored, was like the father figure. Some people who were followers came to my concert. It was cool. There were no seats; people were sitting on the floor. I remember a young man approached me and said, “I’m a volunteer lawyer for the arts. If you’d like to be incorporated, I can help you.” Those were the years that the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts started functioning and were giving grants not just to companies but also to individual artists, if you were doing interesting work. But you could not get a grant unless you were incorporated.

Ze’eva Cohen performing James Waring’s 32 Variations in C Minor, 1973, in Cunningham Studio. Photograph by Shelley Seccombe. Courtesy of Shelley Seccombe.

Tenant Community Programs

The Vegetable Co-op

Ellen Rosen: There was a vegetable co-op. It had four driver/shoppers, people who owned cars and drove to the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx at 5 a.m. once a week. The other members sorted, bagged, and distributed the produce. Each week was a surprise. You might get persimmons, artichokes, or melons, beets, cabbage, and tomatoes. There was always far more than you needed. We became very creative cooks.

Sandra Kingsbury, actor: I was part of the co-op in the seventies. Joya [Staack] was one of the drivers. I was a driver. … Everybody had to do something. I don’t remember how long I did it. I think maybe I had to shop once a month. For me it was hell, getting up at 5 in the morning and driving up to the Bronx Terminal Market—deserted streets. Joya took me the first time to show me, and she trained me. I started doing it. I would come back, and I would deliver all the food to the Community Room. And somebody would be there to sort it all. Then I’d come home and go back to bed. I’d go down later and get my food. I think I would be in charge of making decisions about what was a good deal that day. What things I should be looking for: spinach, berries when they were in season, if I could get them, potatoes and onions always. It was a burden to try to use everything up and cook it. And it wasn’t just Westbeth. It was all over the neighborhood. People from outside Westbeth were involved—our friends.

Christina Maile: Yes, it was so amazing because I hated vegetables, but because everyone said this was something—that’s what I meant, if someone said, this is what we’re going to do now, I’d go, OK. Every week we would get a box of vegetables; there would be celery and potatoes. There would be enough for maybe one and a half meals, but since I didn’t know how to cook anyway, I joined in to get it.

Westbeth Parking Association

Ellen Rosen: We also formed a parking co-op and rented space under the old Miller Highway, often known as the West Side Highway. … We called ourselves the Westbeth Parking Association. [It] was started in 1973 by two tenants in response to the dearth of on-street parking in the neighborhood, which was commercially zoned. There was “No Parking, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.” … Behind Westbeth, the space underneath the highway was unused except for a few old abandoned trucks. If you parked there, you often got a ticket. The association rented that space from New York City. Initially each member chipped in about $125 a year. By the time we had to disband, around 1990, it was about $150 a quarter. During the time we existed, we expanded from two bays, directly behind Westbeth, to 2½ blocks, five bays, between West 11th Street and West 12th Street. We cut out stencils, sprayed signs, and parked our cars. There were 35 members. All work was voluntary. Eventually the person who did the bookkeeping, etc., didn’t pay for her spot, but she had to be convinced by others to do that. That person was me.

Christina Maile: I loved the Parking Association. You see, all of these things—what happened was that a lot of people felt empowered to do stuff. … Ellen decided we needed a parking area, and she went to the DOT [Department of Transportation] and got a permit, and we got these medallions to put on our cars. She was great, and it lasted a while. The only trouble was that we had to locate in what was then a forgotten area on the waterfront. So every time we went to get the car, something would have maybe been vandalized. Somebody would have stolen the car radio, or they took off the antenna, or they just broke in. I remember once I went to get my car and someone had broken in, but they had eaten a whole bunch of Chinese food, and they left all the containers on the front and back seats. I remember once also I went to get my car, and I was amazed that everything was fine. So I got in the car, and I backed out, and where I was going, I had to pass by the parking area. As I was passing by the parking area, I looked at my spot, and I said, Oh, my god, they’ve stolen my car. But I was in the car. I was driving—I was so used to something happening.

Sandra Kingsbury: I sublet a spot from Trisha Williams. Trisha would go away for the summer, and that’s when I would have a car. Ellen ran it. I remember I would make out checks to Ellen Rosen. And maybe I did eventually get my own space when one opened up. I know I had a car there for more than just summer. I think it was definitely vandalized. The main thing was that you’d come downstairs, go out under the West Side Highway to get in your car to go someplace and the side view mirror would always be turned around. There’d be transvestites sitting on your car applying their makeup, and they used our mirrors. It was not they who were vandalizing our cars.

The Playgroup

Christina Maile: I did join the mothers’ co-op. There was a wonderful co-op. A lot of families moved in with very young kids all about the same age. We had a space in the basement. It was a playgroup, and we took turns watching each other’s kids while the mothers did something else. That’s how I got to know people—through the playgroup.

Sue Binet: In 1972, my son was two years old and a group of us headed by Ann Joseph, Cliff Joseph’s wife, and Carla Matviak were leading us into forming a cooperative playgroup. Joya [Staack] had kids in it, Carla did, I did, Sandra Kingsbury did, Sally Weiner [did] … The first place that we met, if you go to the basement, and you’re walking up that ramp and there are little steps—we had the space [there] where we would meet with our kids and two of the mothers would stay for a couple of hours with everybody’s kids, and the next week it would be different parents in the group supervising the kids. … After the first year, we put money together, and we hired a teacher, and the space moved from the basement to the theatre building where the New School is. We had access to the outside, to that playground, and then we moved to where the Community Room is now. We had a teacher, and one parent would stay and assist. It was great. Once our kids became school age and were off to kindergarten or first grade, it sort of disbanded. And it wasn’t just for Westbeth. We involved mothers in the community to bring kids. I would say we had a group of up to twenty kids at some point.

Sandra Kingsbury: My memory is of the basement and the Community Room and the fountain. I remember all the kids playing in and out of the fountain. Josh and his peers were being toilet trained, and they would run out to the curb and pee in the street and run back. At least they weren’t peeing in the fountain. … So many young families moved into the building. It was very child friendly. And you’d go through the courtyard on a nice day, and it was filled with parents and children. It was great. It was a wonderful place for young families. Maybe that’s how I knew about the playgroup because I used to take Josh there to play. We lived on Greenwich Street. I think we became involved with the playgroup in 1972, and Josh was in the group on and off till the summer of 1973.

The Westbeth Playgroup, summer 1973
Far left, front row on ground: Aviva Davidson (son Adam, blond boy in front on ground); second row, far left: Joya Staack (in head scarf) holding son John (son Peter, blond boy on ground with thumb in his mouth); back row, far left: Sue Bottoms Binet holding daughter Caitlin and son Chris; back row, far right: Sandra Kingsbury holding son Josh Hamilton; right of them: Linda Haacke holding son Carl. Courtesy of Sandra Kingsbury.

The Older Kids

Ellen Rosen: There were infants, toddlers, tweens, and teens. They played everywhere, in the “commercial spaces which weren’t rented,” in pairs and alone, in playgroups. They played in the halls, the courtyards, on the stairs and on the roofs. They rode big wheels, tricycles, and bicycles with training wheels. They learned how to ride bikes here in the courtyard, the older children teaching the younger ones. They played ball, roller-skated, ran through the water that came from the fountain in the center of the courtyard. … There was so much activity in the courtyard that it was necessary for chicken wire to be installed on the first floor windows of the I Building, to protect them from being broken by stray softballs. … The teenage boys built a skateboard ramp, which was like a sculpture. Made out of light-colored wood, sanded to perfection, it was at least 8 ft. wide, with horizontal boards, curving up against the west wall of the courtyard. … The ramp was perhaps 12 ft. high, huge. The kids raced on their skateboards around the fountain, up the ramp and back down. … The ramp was kept in what was to become the Community Room and wheeled in and out.

Westbeth Courtyard, 1978. Photograph by Shelley Seccombe. Courtesy of Shelley Seccombe.

Westbeth Icon Ralph Lee created the Village Halloween Parade in 1974.

Memories of the scene in the Westbeth Courtyard

Denise Hurd, actor/stage fight choreographer: I remember it as a series of images. I was 12 years old; my sisters were 10 and 8. We were excited about the idea of a parade. We always did trick-or-treating in the building, but a parade was something new. … Our parents took us downstairs in the cool crisp air. There were swirling puppets, courtesy of Ralph Lee, witches flying in the sky, skeletons dancing, and snakes swimming. People in costumes danced and whirled around us, and yet they seemed elevated. Maybe they were on a dais. Maybe they were dressed as skeletons. Maybe. Actual magic was happening. There seemed to be light on the fountain that we usually ran around, and the air was filled with wonder.

Sandra Kingsbury: I remember it as one of the most wonderful things that ever happened at Westbeth. Josh was obsessed with candy. Probably because I didn’t want him to have candy. And the Village Halloween Parade began, and it was like being transported. I’ll never forget going out into the courtyard that night with Josh in his costume and the excitement and the magic of it. The courtyard was filled with all these amazing huge puppets and tap-dancing skeletons and incredible music. There was a rope strung from one side to the other, and these figures went darting across, and the spider would climb up the wall. There were lights illuminating the white wall. The energy and the magic of it—it changed Halloween for me forever. And for Josh, I think. Not that he stopped loving candy. He definitely got his trick-or-treating in, but the parade became much more important.

For more tenant stories celebrating 50 years at Westbeth, go to westbeth.org/westbeth-chronicles/

Notes and Sources for Chapter 1

Notes

Note on Parking Association: Ellen Rosen says the Parking Association was started by her former husband Serge Ivanov along with Doris Planz. When Doris left Westbeth a year later, Ellen ran the association first with Serge and then by herself.

Interviews by author, tape recorded

Binet, Sue, telephone, Sept. 23, 2021
Cohen, Ze’eva, New York City, June 13, 2022
D’Orazio, Jon, New York City, June 3, 2022
Kingsbury, Sandra, New York City, May 12, 2022
Maile, Christina, New York City, April 8, 2022
Mare, Doris, telephone, May 3, 2022
Walker, Dolores, telephone, Feb. 11, 2022

Written material

Binet, Sue, “Westbeth Chronicles,” Westbeth.org
Hurd, Denise, “Westbeth Chronicles,” Westbeth.org
Rosen, Ellen, “50 Years at Westbeth,” unpublished manuscript
Seidman, Hugh, 2013, “Profiles in Art,” Westbeth.org

New York Times articles were retrieved from digitized versions of the Times’s print archive at nytimes.com.

Special thanks

Harry Rosenzweig and Joya Staack for 1970s residents’ council paperwork and to William Anthony, Jon D’Orazio, Shelley Seccombe, Sandra Kingsbury, and Brigitte and Elke Susannah Freed for photographs and scans. Fred Gates for design and layout.

Terry Stoller is a Westbeth resident and author of Tales of the Tricycle Theatre and “Profiles in Art” on Westbeth.org.
Westbeth X Files, Copyright 2022 Terry Stoller and Westbeth Artists Residents Council