Westbeth Artists Housing (Westbeth) is a nonprofit housing and commercial complex dedicated to providing affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations in New York City. Founded in 1968 on the historic former site of Bell Laboratories, Westbeth comprises an entire city block in Manhattan’s West Village, and was conceived to address the acute need to provide affordable housing and studios for artists and their families. Designed by architect Richard Meier, Westbeth is a designated landmark and is included in both the National and New York State Registers of Historic Places, and is one of the first examples of adaptive reuse of industrial buildings for artistic and residential use in the United States. The complex includes 384 residential units for artists and their families, studio spaces, cultural organizations, and commercial units. Westbeth is home to the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, The Kitchen, The New School’s drama program, and other cultural nonprofits. 

Since it opened in 1970, the Westbeth Gallery—a 2,900-square-foot space and resource for curators and fellow visual arts organizations—has presented hundreds of exhibitions, ranging from single artist retrospectives to large-scale group shows to thematically based exhibitions. As part of a multiphased project to replace all of Westbeth’s 663 deteriorated, 100-plus-year-old windows, FCI funding will support the replacement of the eight large original wood windows in the Westbeth Gallery with NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) approved, custom fabricated, historically accurate, triple glazed, energy efficient windows. The project will significantly reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions in one of Westbeth’s most distinctive and publicly accessible areas. The project involves window fabrication, site preparation, installation, finish work, cleanup, and lead testing, ensuring a more consistent indoor temperature suitable for artwork. The gallery’s glass doors, which date from the 1970s and do not close properly, will also be replaced with a sliding door system, providing further insulation.