WestBeth Artists' Housing (New York City, New York)

178-foot, 13-story residential building (and other smaller buildings) designed in 1899 by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz. It is actually a complex of several buildings that made up the Bell Laboratories (from 1868-1966). For a time, it was the largest industrial research center in the United States. Alterations were later made in 1931 by Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker.

Many early technological inventions were developed here, including the first experimental talking movies (1923), black and white and color TV, radar, the vacuum tube, the transistor, medical equipment, the development of the phonograph record and the first commercial broadcasts including the first broadcast of a baseball game and the New York Philharmonic with Toscanini conducting. It also served as the headquarters for the company from 1925 to the early 1960s, when the complex was vacated by Bell, and remained empty until the Westbeth project started later in the decade. The site was also the home for part of the Manhattan Project during World War II.

The main building of the complex, with an address at 55 Bethune Street, has a facade facing West Street that is composed of beige brick, with a 2-story rusticated base. In the center is a grand entryway of rusticated stone with a segmental-arch. Stone band courses run across the lower edges of the 9th and 11th stories. At the center of the 11th and 12th floors is a section of bay windows above an ornate balcony. The top floor is set back above a copper roof cornice.

A lower, 9-story similarly designed building runs along Bethune Street. Along the west side of Washington Street, there remains a section of the High Line railway that ran through the building at its 3rd-floor level.

After two years of renovations by Richard Meier, the building was reopened in 1970 as Westbeth Artists Community, an ambitious project designed to create 384 live-work spaces for artists of all disciplines and their families. In addition to its residential component, there are also large and small commercial spaces, performance spaces, and rehearsal and artists' studios.

Westbeth is home to a number of major cultural organizations, including The New School for Drama, the LAByrinth Theater Company, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the first LGBT synagogue in New York and the largest in the world, with more than 800 members.

s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2391.pdf
www.urbanarchive.org/sites/vC8xZsRGJsf/c9pJ8fME3dT
 office buildingstudio - to be replacedNRHP - National Register of Historic Placesapartment buildinghistoric landmark1890s construction
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Laboratories_Building_(Manhattan)
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Coordinates:  40°44'11"N 74°0'32"W
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Comments

  • Looks like the highline went threw this builing. You can see evidence of it on google street view.
  • Indeed it does, I wonder if there is any effort from the Friends of the High Line to preserve this small section? I supposed since the building is protected they are focusing on the upper half of the High Line, (Rail yard & spur), but I hope something is done with it someday.
This article was last modified 4 months ago