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Oral History Collection- Westbeth



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Questions and research appointments should be directed to Sam Moskowitz.

The Westbeth oral histories collection, begun in 2007, document how the artist housing Westbeth was conceived and implemented. This collection was undertaken as part of a larger project to place Wesbeth on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

Dixon Bain
Ana Steele Clark
George Cominskie
Peter Cott
Merce Cunningham
Joan Davidson
Ralph Lee
Richard Meier
Peter Ruta
Tod Williams



Dixon Bain
Dixon Bain served as the project manager for planning and construction of Westbeth Artist’s Residence in the West Village from 1967-1971.

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Ana Steele Clark
Ana Steele Clark worked at The National Endowment for the Arts for over thirty years, serving the organization from soon after its 1965 founding. Her oral history focuses on the NEA’s role in the creation of Westbeth.

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George Cominskie

Since 1983, Cominskie has lived in Westbeth, a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations, located in the old formerly disused Bell Telephone Labs at Bethune and West Streets. In this oral history, he discusses the significance of an affordable housing community for artists, changes to Wesbeth over the years, and his experiences serving on the Westbeth Artists Residents Council, of which he was the president for many years.

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Peter Cott
Peter Cott served as the Executive Director of the artist’s community Westbeth from 1970 to 1973.

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Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham (1919 -2009) was an American dancer, choreographer and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, located since 1971 at Westbeth in the West Village.

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Joan Davidson
Daughter of J.M. Kaplan and a member of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, Joan Davidson coordinated the founding of the Westbeth Project, an artist’s residence in the West Village. 

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Ralph Lee

Puppeteer Ralph Lee has lived at Westbeth since 1970 and is known as the "Father" of the famous Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

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Richard Meier
Architect Richard Meier was commissioned in 1967 to renovate the former Bell Labortories in Greenwich Village into the affordable artist’s housing Westbeth.   

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Peter Ruta
A renowned painter who focused on views of Lower Manhattan, Ruta painted for nearly seventy years and had lived in Westbeth since its opening in 1970 when he passed away in late 2016.  Born in Germany, he fled to Italy to escape Hitler's rise to power, finally ending up in NYC. In this interview he discusses his time served as an American soldier in WWII and the painting career that followed, as well as memories of raising a family in Westbeth with his wife, Suzanne.

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Tod Williams
Architect Tod Williams worked with Richard Meier during the conversion of Westbeth from an industrial building to artist’s housing in the late 1960s and early 70s. He, along with this wife and two children, were also original tenants of the building.   

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