An estimated 7,000 artists illegally lived in downtown lofts by 1962

Evidence

In 1962, Gilbert Millstein’s New York Times Magazine piece “Portraits of the Loft Generation” estimated that as many as 7,000 artists were holed up, working (and illegally living) in downtown lofts “scattered all over lower Broadway, the streets around Fulton and Washington Markets, Canal, Chambers, Grand and Fulton Streets, Fourth Avenue and Lafayette Street.” Conspicuously absent from his Baedeker were the streets of Lower Manhattan’s largest unrenewed territory—a potential Klondike for artists. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1005

Categorization

• XREF: Core data point for the reader’s ‘what material conditions made this possible’ question — illegal loft living as the cheap-rent mechanism.