Spaces
Bob Gruen: How the Westbeth was won
BY BOB KRASNER
Bob Gruen still recalls the moment
vividly — and, no, it didn’t involve
an event from his storied career as
a rock-’n’-roll photographer.
“When I got the call that there was an
apartment for me in Westbeth,” he said,
“it was the most exciting moment of my
life.”
That was in 1970, when he grabbed
one of the last four spaces available in the
new affordable artists’ housing complex.
The 980-square-foot loft seemed bigger
then, without the subsequent accumulation
of 49 years of photo negatives
and prints, music and memorabilia.
Gruen and a friend built the sleeping
loft and the darkroom and set up space
in a corner to hang seamless background
paper and do photo shoots. Gruen’s fi les
include the iconic portrait of his friend
John Lennon wearing a “New York
City” T-shirt — with the sleeves torn off
at Gruen’s suggestion to give him more
edge — as well as shots of Elvis, the Sex
Pistols, Elton John, the Rolling Stones,
the Ramones, Johnny Thunders, Blondie,
Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and, well, the
list goes on.
The landmarked complex, at 55 Bethune
St., was a Bell Telephones Laboratory
before it was renovated by a nonprofi
t group that hired up-and-coming
architect Richard Meier to turn it into
384 units of live/work housing for artists.
(Bell moved its operations to New
Jersey.)
The initial idea was that artists would
stay for fi ve years, establish themselves
professionally, and then move on. But
things haven’t exactly turned out that
way.
“Fame doesn’t equal fortune,” Gruen
noted, adding that everyone still there
from the early days is within Westbeth’s
income guidelines.
Gruen mentioned a few of the place’s
more notable tenants, including
three no longer with us, pianist
Gil Evans, photographer Diane
Arbus and choreographer
Merce Cunningham, who
had a dance studio there.
Artist Elizabeth Gregory
joined Gruen at Westbeth
in 1993 and they
were subsequently married.
The wedding was
offi ciated by his ex-wife,
Nadya. They settled into
a neighborhood that was
quite different from what
she had been used to living
on the other side of town.
“Compared to the Lower East,
this was the suburbs,” Gregory-
Gruen said. “It’s much quieter over
here.”
The fact that all their neighbors are artists
made a difference, too, since most of
the tenants share a similar lifestyle.
“Rush hour around here is about noon,”
Gregory-Gruen noted. “And,” she added,
“tenant meetings can be pretty wild!”
“Everyone is an artist here, so it makes
it more comfortable,” Gruen said. “Nobody
looks at you like you’re crazy.”
Some of his neighbors had an unexpected
surprise on the Sunday afternoon
John Lennon came to visit him. The
former Beatle wandered along the long
hallway searching for the photographer’s
place.
“He didn’t remember my apartment
number,” Gruen recalled. “He rang every
doorbell on the way to my apartment!”
Things have changed in the neighborhood
since 1970, for the better. The view
from their sofa of the West Side Highway
is completely different now. For a while,
Gruen’s view — their apartment is on
a lower fl oor — was of a collapsed elevated
highway. Trucks were parked underneath
it with the doors open, so that
people knew there was nothing inside to
steal. When it got dark, they became private
rooms for the men cruising the pier.
“That got replaced by crack addicts,”
Gruen recalled. “Before, you couldn’t
see the river. But now it’s Hudson River
Park, and it’s nice that they maintain
it. The park totally changed the feeling of
this apartment: It was a huge day when I
could fi nally see New Jersey.”
Gregory-Gruen remembers what it
was like when she fi rst came to the city in
1985. The nearby Meatpacking District
was still the scene of drugs and transsexual
prostitutes.
“There were no rules,” she said of the
area back then. “It was the last call for the
hedonistic ’70s.”
“It was deserted over here,” chimed in
Gruen. “Nobody knew about this neighborhood.
But it’s become one of the most
expensive — and now the cab drivers
know where it is.”
The apartment is no longer set up for
photo shoots as books, records, CDs
and a TV now fi ll the space where
Gruen once put seamless paper
and lights. The loft is fi lled with
memorabilia and fi le cabinets,
which have become Gregory-
Gruen’s domain. She left her
job at Michael Kors in 2013 to
PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER
Bob Gruen and Elizabeth Gregory
Gruen in their Westbeth apartment,
which contains Gruen’s archive
of rock photos.
become Gruen’s full-time archivist and
cataloguer, with an eye toward eventually
dispersing different caches of history to
the proper institutions. At the moment,
they have no idea how many images of
his they are dealing with. In addition to
everything stored at home, there are four
more storage spaces, two in the city and
two in New Jersey.
“I kept everything,” Gruen said.
On weekends, the two tend to head
Upstate, where they have been renting a
house for the last 20 years. That’s where
Gregory-Gruen gets to work on her own
artwork. Using a surgeon’s scalpel, she
carefully cuts layers of matboard — without
templates or patterns — to create
beautifully intricate three-dimensional
pieces.
“I don’t interfere with her work,” Gruen
said. “I watch her, and I don’t know
how she does it.”
Her work was recently on view at
Howl! Happening gallery, at 6 E. First
St.
Through all the decades that Gruen
has lived in Westbeth, he had not
met Richard Meier, the man responsible
for creating the living spaces. But he fi -
nally got his chance at a recent event. The
photographer introduced himself and his
wife to the famous architect and proudly
proclaimed that he is an original tenant
of the storied building, having lived there
since it opened.
“You were only supposed to be there
for fi ve years!” growled Meier.
For more information, visit http://
www.bobgruen.com/ and http://elizabethgregory
gruen.com/.
PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER
In the apartment, the
ladder leads to the
sleeping loft and more
storage. Where the TV and
shelving and such are now
was once where seamless
backdrop paper was hung for
photo shoots. Many of the books
contain Gruen’s photos.
Schneps Media TVG April 18, 2019 27
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