80 WOOSTER

Got this e-mail from CUNY Professor Roslyn Bernstein:

Dear Lucas

I am writing to tell you about my new book, Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, co-authored with the architect Shael Shapiro. It is a lively narrative of real estate, zoning, development, and art-- a story that will fascinate real estate attorneys in your firm.

www.illegalliving.com

The book is the biography of 80 Wooster, the first successful live/work artist coop in SoHo, organized by George Maciunas, the founder of the Fluxus art movement. Maciunas went on to organize 16 coops or Fluxhouses but his base of operation was in the basement of 80 Wooster where he often hid out from the Attorney General. On the street level, above his lair, was Jonas Mekas's Cinematheque (followed by Anthology Film Archives), a ground-floor space that hosted happenings, film screenings, dance and theater performances, concerts, and art shows.

Hundreds of artists including Trisha Brown, Richard Foreman, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, John Lennon, Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Andy Warhol showed their work in and around the building. Joseph Schlichter walked down the back of the building (a Trisha Brown work recently reprised at The Whitney) and Richard Foreman produced his avant-garde plays in the space.

Our book provides readers with an inside look into the downtown art world and into loft living. It is an original work that includes photos and never-before-heard anecdotes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and of other art world luminaries. As Christopher Gray, the Streetscapes columnist for The New York Times says in a back cover blurb:

"They say real estate makes you crazy, and the artist-developer George Maciunas was wonderfully crazy, inventing the artist's loft and changing the face of SoHo forever. Illegal Living brilliantly captures the birth, middle age and - some would say - death of SoHo, a portrait of an entire way of life through a single building."

I believe that lawyers in Newman Ferrara would be very interested in this book--an intimate portrait of a single building over 40 years, highlighting the complexity of an artist coop and putting into question any simple take on who wins and who loses when neighborhoods change.

Sincerely,

Roslyn Bernstein
Professor of Journalism and Creative Writing
Baruch College, CUNY
H: 212-431-5477


Authors Bios: Shael Shapiro was involved in writing the zoning that legalized artist housing in SoHo and he was the first architect for PS 1 in Queens and for the Clocktower in Manhattan. Mr. Shapiro has worked on hundreds of loft buildings in downtown Manhattan. During the 1970s, Mr. Shapiro worked for Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Roslyn Bernstein is a professor of journalism and creative writing at Baruch College. She regularly reports on arts and culture. She first wrote about SoHo in 1989.