By Terry Stoller

Introduction

As the new tenants settled in, they formed committees to coordinate arts programs and to cope with a variety of problems: inadequate space to do artwork, a need for security, improperly disposed of garbage, graffiti, and piles of dog shit. And it was not long before the financial problems started piling up. A proposal in the April 1972 WestbethBULL, with its focus on the work of the tenants’ Board of Representatives, called for the creation of a subcommittee on financial affairs to research “alternative ownership options” and “alternative sources of income for Westbeth, including grants, concessions, benefits, etc.” This chapter looks at the tenants’ attempts to resolve some of the building’s pressing issues as well as the varied responses to the rapidly rising rents.

“Artists’ Housing, Like Art, Mainly a Matter of Taste,” Grace Lichtenstein, New York Times, March 12, 1970

“It’s a fantastic mix,” said 46-year-old Peter Cott, Westbeth’s director. “This place bears no relationship to any other apartment house in existence. … He paused a moment and smiled. “We just can’t stop these people from holding meetings,” he said. A tenants’ council was set up shortly after the earliest residents moved in late in December. … Michael Ackerman, a playwright who heads the council, explained that the major complaints then were lack of space, and too much noise. The complaints are the same today.”

In the April 1970 Westbeth News, Mike Ackerman wrote that he had “ended up as temporary chairman” of the tenants’ council “pending elections” upon full occupancy of Westbeth. By June 1970, Harry Rosenzweig had been elected moderator of the tenants’ organization now called Westbeth Meeting.

Harry Rosenzweig, playwright, sculptor: I know we had big general meetings, and it was really a bunch of women who were very helpful. It was Malvine Cole. She was from Vermont. I spent some summers in Vermont, so I was familiar with town meetings. That’s what she wanted to do, and I think we agreed. I was chosen as the moderator. But the fact of the matter is that someone had to be the chief, and in some measure I was. I ran the meetings, which I enjoyed. For me, it was a revelation.

There were chairmen of various committees, for buildings and grounds, recreation and entertainment, as well as representatives for each of the disciplines: painters, dancers, filmmakers, craftsmen, playwrights, musicians, and multimedia. There was also a Board of Representatives, said to “represent meeting in matters of tenancy, relating to the ownership and management of Westbeth, and in other matters when called upon by Action Chairmen.” (June 1970, Officers Westbeth Meeting)

Tenant participation in the running of Westbeth was welcomed by the president, Joan Kaplan Davidson.

Letter from Joan Davidson to Harry, Ann[e], and Members of the Board of Representatives, June 18, 1970 (excerpt)

“Life at Westbeth now appears to me to be running inordinately smoothly. Is it thanks to the relaxing influence of warm weather, the resumption by residents of their own work, or the reassuring presence of the fine new Westbeth Meeting? … My father, J.M. Kaplan, regrets that there wasn’t time before so many residents dispersed for the summer to meet with you. He is eager to discuss the possibilities of making Westbeth a tenant-owned and -managed cooperative, and believes that preliminary steps to that end can be taken now.”

Westbeth tenants meeting, early 1970s. Back left, in light coat, standing: Harry Rosenzweig. Photograph by Leonard Freed. Courtesy of Brigitte and Elke Susannah Freed.

Security, or Lack Thereof

Christina Maile, visual artist, writer: Security was a big problem because it was still an out of the way area. … There was the West Side Highway, which was really dark. And we were a giant building that really had no lighting, and the worst part was that we were a building that had a million entrances. That was the main cause of a feeling of being insecure. Because people could come in off the street at any time. You could go through Washington Street. You could go through the courtyard. If someone was coming [out] through one of the exit doors, you could go in that way.

Ellen Rosen, painter: The building was unlocked all day. There was no intercom and no security. At night maintenance locked the doors. If you were having guests after the doors were locked, they had to call you from a payphone on the corner of Bethune Street. But you might not have had a phone yet, or if you had one it might have stopped working. At least there was that payphone. … Out of necessity, we formed a security committee and organized a night patrol.

Mae Gamble: During the early years of Westbeth, we really had no security personnel. One person would sit at the desk and frequently was a woman. Tenants made their own security team: Serge Ivanov, Will Gamble, Hugh Hurd, John Hacker, and Norman Penn.

Sue Binet, theatre/dance: The desk for security was in the inner courtyard. That little lobby. And people began to have a problem with that because they had a longer walk around the isolated unlit courtyard. Efforts were made to try to resolve that.

Dogs

Two Views on Committees in Westbeth Residents’ Bulletin, November 1970

“Letters from Westbeth #2,” signed Karen Cadwalader
“The report by the Grievance Committee Chairman in the October Bulletin has raised several questions for me. 1-What are the guidelines that were used in setting up this committee? 2-What are the guidelines that this committee uses for making decisions and policy? 3-What is the function of this committee, and who is the committee answerable to? I feel that all of us should closely examine the nature of the Grievance Committee’s report and decide whether or not we need such a committee. … From the report I gather that this committee is handling complaints from tenants about other tenants. Probably most of these difficulties could be worked out between the aggrieved people. …”

Editorial, signed Ed Hubert, Editor
“… Don’t knock committees. If they are good ones they can save your energy, do a lot of work for you and channel power into the right direction. It all depends on the efficiency of a machine-like structure. … Much of the good work that has been done here has been done through committees. The bad things that happen at Westbeth are not all the fault of artists who cannot live with each other; certain types of noise for instance can be traceable to poor or cheap construction methods. But in their refusal to recognize the machine, in their contempt of it, a good many artists, in their desperate drive for individuality and privacy, give up the one thing that can work for them. A well oiled machine. The machine has been set up. … By oil, I mean attend one lousy meeting a month. …”

Christina Maile: Sometimes you’d wake up in the morning, there would be five or six things [under your door]—three of them would be petitions for you to sign, one would be a letter from a tenant complaining vociferously about her next door neighbor, about noise, and there would be: Can you join this group? Can you join that group?—and that close typing that people used, single-spaced, mimeographed. It’s a wonder they got anyone. … Imagine all night there would be people wandering the halls and putting this stuff under everybody’s door.

A Theatrical Interlude

Photo: Up! production. Far right, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. Courtesy Christina Maile.

Traffic Lights

Susan Berger, mixed media, fiber artist: My windows faced Washington Street, and there was noise from the trucks, which belonged to the industrial occupants of the far West Village. … There were cobblestone streets and only a stop sign on Bethune and Washington Streets. No traffic light. It was busy with trucks doing their thing on weekdays.

Sue Binet: Once we put our cooperative playgroup in place, the teacher, Bernadette, had the thought that we needed the traffic light ’cause the playgroup included children from the community, and the kids had to cross to get here.

Playgroup protest on the northeast corner of Washington and Bethune Streets, early 1970s. Courtesy Sue Binet. The Bank/Bethune Assn., February 1972, reported on a committee taking steps to get a traffic light.

Sue Binet: When I took over in ’72 as the maintenance chair, we formed a committee of representatives from every floor in the building. … I had 15 committee members. A representative from each floor, a representative from the basement, the communal space, a representative from the I Building. And the problems we were addressing were: extermination services, how to get storage space, tenant abuse—we addressed pets; we tried to come up with pet hall policy. We addressed graffiti; we addressed the light fixtures, which were disappearing from the hallway; compactors, we had so many compactor issues, and the intercom was another one. … And we eventually got into the security issues because doors were not being locked.

The First Rent Increase

Letter from Harry Rosenzweig, Moderator, Westbeth Meeting, to John B. Maylott, Director, New York Area Office, Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Administration [probably late December 1970 or early January 1971] (excerpt)

“We are tenants of Westbeth artists’ housing under Federal Housing Administration jurisdiction. Not yet residents a year, new leases for our second year carry stiff rent increases, and the management of Westbeth Corp. Housing Development contends it has the right, with your approval, to impose further rent increases. … At this time, we feel rent decreases are called for here. Since the building was opened to our tenancy, maintenance, day-to-day, has been unreliable and, in some areas, dangerous.”

A Visual Arts Interlude

Artist William Anthony organized a gift of works from Westbeth artists for Joan Davidson, which was presented to her in spring 1971. He compiled two volumes of more than fifty original drawings, photos, and prints.

In February 1972, there was a new tenants Board of Representatives that included Sue (Bottoms) Binet and architect Greg Matviak, who became moderator of the board.

“Board of Reps Background,” WestbethBULL, April 1972 (excerpt)

“1. We were elected with a referendum mandating us to oversee and implement a partnership agreement with Westbeth Corp. wherein the tenants would hold control.
2. We needed to gather as much information about Westbeth, its history, its financial situation, commercial lease situation, and the people playing important roles in all these areas, as possible. We have given particular attention to the commercial lease situation.”

Sue Binet: We never were able to rent the commercial space, which was supposed to be higher rents and subsidizing the lower rents that the tenants paid. No matter how we looked at the figures when we were in meetings with Joan Davidson or Lothar Stiefel, who was treasurer then, it just seemed obvious that we were going to have to have a rent increase. And as the Board of Reps, we presented those findings in a meeting. … The Board of Reps had this opportunistic moment to meet with management, to meet with Joan Davidson and try to resolve: Do we bring in a real estate person? What’s the market in this area? This was a very desolate area back then. The High Line was still up and going through but not used. The meat market was active, but it was not well lit. We had hookers and transvestites selling their wares during the night. It was not a safe neighborhood. Renting commercial space in this area was next to impossible.

Ad copy from WestbethBULL, April 1972.

The 1972 Rent Increase, the Rent Strike, the Dissolution of the Board of Representatives

Sue Binet: There was a group of people that were totally opposed to any rent increase, and they formed another committee and they forced a rent strike, and they forced the impeachment of the Board of Reps.

Sheila Milder Schwid, painter: I would guess it was because it was the second increase. We could see there was no end to this. And we had been promised a place that we could afford. I would like to add something else to that: The feeling was that we were the important people. We all thought we were extremely wonderful, important, talented people and that things should be done for us. It was a kind of strange, fairy tale attitude, but it worked. I think we got publicity in the Times.

Christina Maile: There was one rent increase after another. That’s what made everyone even more suspect that things were awry. We had the first rent increase, and that was OK. Then the second rent increase, and we couldn’t figure out why there was a second rent increase when there was no increase in services, no increase in anything else. And whoever was in charge gave really bad explanations about why there was a rent increase in that instance … people got so angry and frightened that maybe they were trying to get the artists out and get more people that could afford to come in.

Memo marked “Urgent to All Tenants from Westbeth Committee for Internal Action,” Signed Hal Miller [actor] (excerpt)

“Twenty-five concerned tenants signed a petition pledging their refusal to sign the new and highly irregular lease offered by the Westbeth Corporation, containing the unfair seventeen per cent rent increase. A special action committee was formed by Chairman, Harold Miller, who then called a meeting of the twenty-five tenants on Monday, June 12th [1972].”

Hal Miller goes on to report that as a result of a general meeting of Westbeth tenants and the continued collection of signatures, a “total of 250 signatures are now on the petitions” supporting the action group and agreeing not to sign the new lease. Among the other actions the WCIA called for: “Make signs and banners. Picket with us … Hang sheets or painted notices outside your windows.”

Christina Maile: I was against the rent increase because everyone told me I should be against it. I became a little bit more active, and I put up a big sign out my window. Everyone put signs or sheets out their windows supporting the strike. But I thought being on the fourth floor, mine was too high to be seen. So I painted a big sheet, and hung it off the balcony. And both signs said, Nothing Is Forever. Everyone kept asking me, What do you mean by nothing is forever? They thought I was against the rent increase, but I meant that philosophically bad times could not last. … I did go on strike. We put our rent in escrow. Moses [Gunn] said it’s OK, so I did it.

The Board of Representatives was requested to resign by the WCIA, and the board countered with a 10-page w.b. bulletin (June 21, 1972) describing the research they had done and the actions they had taken, complete with a multisectioned appendix laying out Westbeth’s financial situation, both in the present and in the future. At a meeting on June 28, there was a resolution to dissolve the Board of Representatives.*

Introductory page to w.b. bulletin, 6/21/72.

Apparently at that June 28 meeting the WCIA had also been dissolved. A newly named rent action group, Westbeth Artists’ Action Committee of Westbeth Meeting, compiled a list of tenant demands, including “No rent increase” and a “Five (5) year lease,” as well as a list of grievances and complaints. In late July, William Josephson, counsel to Westbeth Corp., wrote that more than 60 percent of Westbeth’s residents had signed their new leases “effective July 1, 1972.” (Letter, July 28, 1972, “Dear Resident of Westbeth.”)

The Outcome

An October 9, 1972, letter from J.M. Kaplan, president of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, to the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities stated that “the rent strike has now finally subsided.”*** Joya Staack told me that the strike ended “with a whimper.” I asked a number of longtime tenants for the amount of the rent rise in their signed 1972 leases. Understandably, some fifty years later, no one I spoke with remembered definitively what the rent increase had been.  

Joan Kaplan Davidson resigns

“Westbeth: The First Five Years,” Joan Kaplan Davidson, New York Times, Feb. 18, 1973 (excerpt)

“Now that Westbeth is breaking even, the Fund’s trustees are turning the administration over to a new, public Board of Directors which will assume full responsibility. One representative of the Kaplan Fund will serve on the board, although the Fund will no longer play a financial or managerial role. …
“Here Mrs. Davidson offers her view of the five years she has been president of Westbeth:
“… The early gemutlichkeit proved to be only skin deep when Westbeth was torn asunder by the rent strike of 1972. To what end? Eventually every single tenant agreed to the new rent. The considerable legal expenses were paid out of Westbeth’s budget, which means out of the tenants’ own pockets. In the turmoil and anger, a minority of tenants dismantled their own governing board. All tenants were thus deprived of a voice in the running of Westbeth, which before the strike they had had in ample measure.”

Christina Maile: We all supported Joan Davidson, but the language that we used in talking to her and in talking about what everyone thought were the deficits of living in Westbeth came across as very adversarial. That’s why she stepped back. And on her side, she expected endless gratitude and appreciation, so she was naïve in that sense too. So what happened was that she then stepped away, and we continued fighting, which culminated in the co-op fight.****

From page 1, “A History of the Finances and Governance of Westbeth,” Sept. 26, 2003, letter addressed to the Westbeth Housing Development Fund Directors, signed Mae Gamble, Andrea Mihok, Fay Spahn, and Joya Staack, all former tenant representatives on the Board of Directors (excerpt)

“Right from the beginning the rents at Westbeth did not generate enough income to cover operating expenses and mortgage payments. Though residential rents were raised—in spite of a noisy rent strike and much media attention—the money coming in was still not enough to keep up mortgage payments.”

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

Coming next: Chapter 3: Westbeth Residents’ Council, More Financial Woes, and the 10th Anniversary

Notes and Sources for Chapter 2

Notes

*In a July 12, 1972, three page statement by members of the Board of Representatives, the board members objected to the lack of a secret ballot referendum by the wider community at the June meeting and determined they would “continue to serve Westbeth Meeting”; however, I have no further paperwork saying when they disbanded. In 2022, a tenant told me in no uncertain terms, they were “impeached.”

**Various references to the percentage of the increase ranged from 16.69% [w.b. bulletin, 6-21-72] to 16.76% [letter from Board of Representatives to Clay Felker, New York magazine, July 27, 1972] to about 17% [“Strains at Westbeth Threaten a Noble Vision, William G. Connolly, New York Times, Sept. 24, 1972] to 17½ percent.

***The letter goes on to say “although there remain eviction proceedings against six tenants who still refuse to sign new leases at the higher rents.”

****The co-oping issue will be featured in a later chapter.

Interviews by author, tape recorded

Binet, Sue, telephone, Sept. 23, 2021; Sept. 23, 2022; Oct. 14, 2022
Maile, Christina, New York City, April 8, 2022
Rosen, Ellen, telephone, New York City, Nov. 1, 2022
Rosenzweig, Harry, telephone, March 9, 2022
Schwid, Sheila, telephone, May 3, 2022

Written material

Berger, Susan, “Westbeth Chronicles,” Westbeth.org
Gamble, Mae, “Westbeth Chronicles,” Westbeth.org
Rosen, Ellen, “50 Years at Westbeth,” unpublished manuscript

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, Sue Binet, Roger Braimon, Brigitte and Elke Susannah Freed, Christina Maile, and John Turner for records, 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