Richard Kaplan, he’s a friend of mine, you know Richard?
[Q] Yes, of course.
And his father and the Kaplan Foundation got together with the National Endowment for the Arts to create artists' housing in the... in the Village, in the abandoned building which had belonged to Bell Telephone Laboratories, which were 13 inter-connected buildings. And Richard said to me one day, would I go down and look at it with him because they wanted to make this renovation and I did. And I remember walking through the place that was a mess, really, just... and Richard said, you know, I’d love to do this but I can’t because the family foundation is, sort of, part of the support and...
[Q] That's his work.
And would I be interested? So I said, sure and so I... they said but we have to do all the drawings in nine months and start construction in nine months otherwise we lose the financing. So we worked day and night and produced the drawings for Westbeth, to convert it to artists' housing. And since it was subsidised FHA finance, there was a limit that people would pay in terms of rent, so someone would get a duplex studio and an apartment and pay a hundred and something dollars a month. And the idea was those artists would move out after two years and younger artists who were struggling would move in. The problem was there was no mechanism for moving them out and so they’re still living there today, paying $180 a month. Amazing, that’s amazing, those who are still alive.