Richard Meier - Westbeth Artists' Housing (6/36)

Richard Kaplan is a friend of mine. You know Richard? Of course. And his father and the Kaplan Foundation got together with the National Endowment for the Arts to create artist housing in the village in the abandoned building which had belonged to Bell Telephone Laboratories which were 13 interconnected buildings. And Richard said to me one day, would I go down and look at it with him? Because they wanted to make this renovation. And I did and I remember walking through the places. And Richard said, you know, I'd love to do this but I can't because the family foundation is sort of part of the support. That's his work. And would I be interested? So I said, sure. And so they said, but we have to do all the drawings in nine months and start construction in nine months otherwise we lose the financing. So we worked day and night and produced the drawings for West Bend to convert it to artist housing. And since it was subsidized FHA finance, there was a limit that people would pay in terms of rent. So someone would get a duplex studio and apartment and pay a hundred and something dollars a month. And the idea was those artists would move out after two years and younger artists who were struggling would move in. The problem was there was no mechanism for moving them out and so they're still living there today paying $180 a month. Amazing. Those of us who are still alive.