“It was secure; you knew you wouldn’t have to leave,” Walter said. But affordable rent wasn’t the only, or even the primary, draw. Moving into Westbeth — which opened in 1970, after a young Richard Meier oversaw the conversion of the former Bell Laboratories into 383 live-work spaces — also meant joining an artistic community.
“It’s a legendary place, living among all these artists. I liked the idea of that,” said Walter, 69, who was ecstatic when she finally made it to the top of the list after a decade. “I remember calling up all my friends and my parents, screaming.”
Not even the size of the apartment she would be moving into — a 390-square-foot studio — dimmed her enthusiasm.
She had been sharing a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village with her long-term girlfriend, and initially the plan was for them to move into Westbeth together. But when they discovered that their combined income would push them over the limit for a one-bedroom apartment, it was decided that Walter should take a studio by herself.
“We weren’t getting along anyway at the time, and it seemed like some space might help,” she said. “It was really a blessing, as we broke up a few years later.”
And if her studio was, in some ways, Spartan — she slept on a pullout sofa because there wasn’t enough floor space to have a bed and do yoga at home — the building offered an elevator and a laundry room, which felt like luxuries after decades of living in walk-ups. Most important, she had the freedom to focus on the work she wanted to be doing.
“It really enabled me to write creative nonfiction,” said Walter, who wrote her memoir, “Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing,” while living at Westbeth. “If I had a higher rent, I would have had to do more of other things.”
Of course, she added, “living here has its ups and downs — people know your business and that kind of thing.”
It also took her 14 years on the internal wait list to move into a one-bedroom apartment, a 600-square-foot space for which she pays $1,021 a month.
“My friends like to joke that it only took me 24 years to get a one-bedroom in Westbeth,” said Walter, who consulted several people in the building to help decide whether she should take the apartment or hold out for a potentially better space in the future.
After a weekend of consideration, she told the management office she would take it, and she felt certain she had made the right choice when they told her they had been inundated with calls and inquiries from other wait-listed residents.
“This is considered a small one-bedroom,” she said, “but I like it because the light is so good.”
Art from other Westbeth residents decorates her walls: a Bill Anthony sketch, an abstract painting by Hedy O’Beil and a Ralph Dubin piece she bought at the Westbeth Flea Market after his widow died.
The most striking works, however, are two very large abstract paintings in blues and greens done by Hilda Wisoky, a long-term resident who went into a nursing home. As her family didn’t want the work she left behind, the building management offered it to other residents for free.
When Walter moved into her space, she thought she might put up a wall to divide her 600 square feet into a more traditional living room/bedroom setup. (Westbeth’s apartments come as raw space that tenants are left to design and divvy up to suit their creative needs.) But she quickly decided that she preferred to keep it open. She likes her expanse of big windows and the sliver view of the Empire State Building that she can see from her bed, a particularly nice vista at night.
Her dominant view, however, is to the north, overlooking what was the Superior Ink factory when she moved into the building and is now Superior Ink, a luxury condo development, where the designer Marc Jacobs paid more than $10 million for a townhouse shortly after it opened.
When she left the East Village, Walter said, “I was in my late 40s, and this seemed like a better fit; the East Village has always been very young.”
She continued: “Now I sometimes feel like an impostor who slipped into this neighborhood. But Westbeth is like an oasis.”
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West Village, Manhattan| $1,021/mo.
Kate Walter, 69
Occupation: Writer of creative nonfiction and recently retired staff instructor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
What is Westbeth: The first and largest federally subsidized artists’ colony, opened in 1970 in a cluster of converted Bell Laboratories buildings. The wait list has been closed for years. To get in, Walter had to prove she was an artist by showing her work, and she had to be recommended by other artists in her field.
An aging community: Although Westbeth is a NORC, or naturally occurring retirement community, in recent years Walter said she has noticed more children in the halls.
Creative pursuits: Walter is part of an acting group and a singing group called the Bliss Singers. Both workshops are held at Westbeth and taught by Westbeth residents, but they are open to others who live in the neighborhood.
On how other residents live: “It’s really interesting to see what other people in your same line do with their space,” Walter said. “Some built rooms; one woman built lofts; another couple built all these cabinets. Another guy had his bed and his desk against one wall, and the other 80 percent of the space was his painting studio. Everyone’s apartment looks different.”
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.