The first and largest federally funded artists’ colony in the United States, Westbeth became home to a generation of artists grateful for cheap rent and a place to live and work. Since 1970 the west Greenwich Village site has provided a home to artists who range from emerging to well-established and represent a wide variety of disciplines.

Inhabitants are painters, writers, photographers, filmmakers, poets, sculptors, dancers, choreographers, musicians, and composers, and have included luminaries like Diane Arbus, Merce Cunningham, Joseph Chaikin, Nam June Paik, and Nadine Gordimer.

Opened through funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the J.M. Kaplan Foundation, Westbeth was originally reconfigured from five abandoned industrial buildings by the renowned architect Richard Meiers, and was recently designated as a New York City landmark. This film provides a window into the array of creative inhabitants who live, work, and age there, and chronicles the evolution of the neighborhood from crime-ridden to coveted.