The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists of New York

by Peter Trachtenberg

An intimate history of America’s first publicly funded artists’ housing project, the artists who lived there, and the transformation of New York’s West Village across five decades.Westbeth Artists Housing was founded in 1970 to provide affordable housing for artists and their families. The complex of buildings occupies a full city block—three quarters of a million square feet—of prime New York real estate in the now-trendy Meatpacking District. It is a kind of Great Society for bohemians, a freakish utopia for more than three hundred and eighty artists—painters, sculptors, poets, playwrights, actors, dancers, performance artists, and at last count one puppeteer—and their families. Its residents have included Diane Arbus and Robert Di Niro, Sr., Merce Cunningham and Muriel Rukeyser, jazz composer Gil Evans and novelist Tama Janowitz.While some Westbeth residents achieved fame, obscurity drove others to bitterness and despair. The Last Artists in New York tells the story of Westbeth through the life and tragic death of the flamboyantly eccentric Gay Edward Milius III, an idealistic artist, flea market picker, and aspiring novelist who moved into the building in 1976. In January 2006, Milius III took his life in his thirteenth floor apartment. He wasn’t the first Westbeth’s tenant to commit suicide—that was probably Arbus, who took her life on July 26, 1971, a year after Westbeth opened.Before Westbeth’s waiting list was closed in 2007—and again in May 2019, only a few months after it had reopened—it was more than ten years long. Has it become a naturally occurring retirement community, an arty senior center? The Last Artists in New York is a chronicle of the changing notions of what it means to be a successful artist and the impossibility of attaining the twenty-first century version of it while staying true to the old bohemian ethos. It is the story of individuals, some of whom became famous in the worlds of art, music, theater, dance, and literature, some of whom survive only in the memories of aging friends and lovers. It is for any reader interested in social history as well as artistic cultural history.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

344 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Peter Trachtenberg is the author of the memoir 7 TATTOOS, THE BOOK OF CALAMITIES: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning (Little Brown, August 2008), and ANOTHER INSANE DEVOTION (Da Capo, October 2012), a book about the search for a missing cat that's also an encoded exploration of love and marriage.

His essays, journalism, and short fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, BOMB, TriQuarterly, O, The New York Times Travel Magazine, and A Public Space. His commentaries have been broadcast on NPR'S "All Things Considered."

Trachtenberg is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

He's the recipient of a NYFA artist's fellowship, the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction, a Whiting Writers Fellowship, a 2010 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and a 2012 residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center. The Book of Calamities was given the 2009 Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award "for scholarly studies that contribute significantly to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity."

Reviews

[Mickey Revenaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank You, Peter Trachtenberg!

Your genius at combining social history, art criticism, and human insight makes this a fabulous read - and elevates the sting of what has been lost. We're grateful!

[Sharondblk · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intimate history of America’s first publicly funded artists’ housing project, the artists who lived there, and the transformation of New York’s West Village across five decades. Westbeth Artists Housing was founded in 1970 to provide affordable housing for artists and their families.

This book provides a VERY detailed account of this interesting and unique housing project, including what happens when a group of people start to get old together. It does this through personal anecdotes. I can see how this book would be interesting for those who were involved. For me it was a bit dense, with the wider story told through that of many, many individuals. I can see people who were involved in that scene really enjoying it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers from a free eArc in exchange for an honest review.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history of the Westbeth artists' collective, a fixture in New York's Greenwich Village for decades. It provides affordable housing for those in the arts and is a community unto itself, as well as having been home to famous artists, writers, photographers, dancers, and musicians. Former and current residents recall their lives at Westbeth; there is humor and tragedy. There's a mysteriousness to Westbeth as well as questions that will never be answered. Excellent read for those in the arts.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating dive into the lives of artists struggling for existence in the '70s and how subsidized housing in Greenwich Village saved so many of them. Westbeth still exists--only wish there were more projects like this in New York, and the rest of the country.