At the World Trade Center, Artists Create as Tenants Await

The top floor of 3 World Trade Center currently sits vacant with landlord Silverstein Properties hoping it will soon fetch triple-digit office rents per square foot.

For now, Kerry Irvine — an Abstract Expressionist painter who lost her sister when terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers on this very site in 2001 — has taken up residence there free of charge.

“The beauty of being up here is I can work on five pieces at once,” Irvine said.

Developer Larry Silverstein first welcomed Irvine and a handful of other local artists to work on empty floors at WTC about seven years ago. His grandson, Cory Silverstein, ran with the idea, and four years ago he co-founded the nonprofit Silver Art Projects, a highly competitive residency program that provides a year of free studio space to 28 artists selected from a pool of 1,200 applications.

“A lot of artists in New York will never be able to afford studio space of any kind, even a tiny little cracker box,” said Gregory Thornbury, the executive director of Silver Art. “But, if you get in here, you’ve been anointed.”

It’s all possible thanks to Silverstein’s gift of 43,019 square feet across the entire 28th floor of 4 WTC, which is divided into a maze of studios. Meanwhile, Irvine and a handful of other artists continue their nomadic existence on other empty floors throughout different towers, part of the studio program that has been going off without a hitch for years as Silverstein rebuilt the World Trade Center.

That includes artist Todd Stone — currently perched on the 71st floor of 3 WTC — who has been documenting the fall and rise of the WTC in watercolor.

Irvine’s 30,130-square-foot studio sits nine floors above and it takes about 90 seconds to ascend all 80 floors to it, but once you get there, how about that view? You can see everything happening in the city and New York Harbor in miniature.

Of course, it won’t last forever. The goal is to rent out the valuable space, not give it away for free.

“Every time they lease, they scramble and find me a new space,” Irvine said, but she’s OK with that. She’s moved her studio within the WTC five times over the past seven years.

Commercial Observer visited Silver Art on Sep. 13 and talked to a few of the current artists-in-residence about what they’re working on.