An Artist Recounts Litany of Loft Misery

By Carl Glassman
POSTED DEC.4, 2006

Betty Beaumont opened the door to the bathroom in her loft and looked in. “I see they put my bathtub back,” she said.  “I don’t know where the sink is.  They threw the hot water heater away. All the piping I put in.” The plumbing to her darkroom was gone, too, she noted, as was the marble and butcher-block kitchen, and stainless steel cabinets she had installed.

But to hear her tell it, the artist has lost much more than fixtures in the landlord’s renovation of her 2,000 square foot, second-floor loft at 40 Lispenard St., her home and studio since 1977. The renovation she says she was told would take two to three weeks is going on three years. It is a period she describes in almost Job-like proportions.

Beaumont, a conceptual artist whose works in many media were packed into much of her loft space, has been so occupied by legal battles with her building’s owners that a recent installation of her work included two large glass cases filled with thousands of legal papers. It represents, she said, about one-tenth of her collection. “I can’t think of any part of my life that isn’t affected,” she said. “It’s just been totally consuming.”

The installation, called “Boxed In/Boxed Out,” was shown last month in an unrented ground-floor space on lower Nassau Street. Along with the legal papers, she detailed her attempts to catalogue and keep track of her displaced art, which now is stored in three different warehouses as she awaits an end to the renovation of her loft.

But storage of her work has just been one part of the problem. According to the artist: noxious sewer gas vented for months into her apartment after plumbing was altered in the storefront downstairs; her loft was flooded from upstairs, when workers left water on while she was away; her ceiling collapsed four times; her toilet sprayed geyser-like when it rained, due to the plumbing problems downstairs. Then there was the ear-splitting noise from workers above her. The list does not end there.

The four-story loft building, like many others pioneered by artists in 1970s Tribeca, had outlived its industrial  usefulness when Beaumont moved into what was once a printing plant; its massive, cast iron equipment still there. Under the city’s Loft Law, designed to protect tenants like Beaumont, the owner is obligated to upgrade the buildings to comply with residential building codes. Most were upgraded years ago, but there are others, like 40 Lispenard, where the work has not been completed.

Beaumont pays $499 a month for two second-floor spaces. She said she suspects that the owner has dragged out the renovation to get her to accept a buyout. She says a similar size loft across the street rents for $15,000 a month.

Beaumont identifies the principals in the building’s ownership as Pearl and Barbara Seril. So far, she said, she has been offered $75,000 to leave. “It just seems ludicrous. I have more fixtures in the space than that,” she said. “At least I did before they ripped them out.”

A call to Pearl Seril for comment was referred to Joseph Burden, her lawyer. Burden said he was unaware of several of the problems that Beaumont described. But he pointed out that Beaumont would soon have an all-new apartment, with new code-compliant fixtures, as required by law. And he faults the Loft Law on many of the problems because it mandates that tenants can remain in their apartments during the difficult period of building renovation.

“The tenant is inconvenienced and the owner is inconvenienced and both parties have to accommodate  [each other],” he said.

In the meantime, Beaumont continues to wait for the day when the accommodating can end. You can hear in her voice the weariness of that long wait.

“Just get it done,” she said.