The expansion of government-subsidized housing loans meant that cheap space was also easy to come by, as New York had a then-ample stock of residential and industrial buildings. But the city has always romanticized artist-dominated buildings, the kinds of communal spaces in which every unit might be home to an artist’s studio (and sometimes, unofficially, their residences, too). In an almost unheard-of feat of perseverance, the same artist, Don Dudley, 93, has been working out of this loft since 1971. So artists have had to create a kind of whisper network to withstand New York’s unimpeachable forward march, which the art market has, ironically, enabled. Most of them are temporary fixes before an artist — who’s grown out, or been priced out, of their space — has to move on.

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Persons: Bill, Don Dudley, What’s, it’s, — who’s Organizations: Veterans, Pop Art, Brooklyn Army, Financial, Artists Locations: Europe, Paris, New York, York, Sunset, Williamsburg , Brooklyn, Ridgewood , Queens, TriBeCa, ”, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens