Issues in artist building mirror city’s

By Pam Rosenblatt

At the end of its second decade, the artists who live and work in the Brickbottom building are, like the city itself, dealing with advancing age, improved economic conditions and a future that appears will bring dramatic change.

The Brickbottom Artists Building was established in 1988 by one hundred artists, many of whom had little money. In 1985, these young artists, mainly from Fort Point in South Boston, pooled their money to purchase the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Building at 1 Fitchburg St. and then took three years to renovate it into what is casually known today as Brickbottom.

Two decades later it is a different world in the building. When an artist moves in now, they are not of the “young beret-wearing ‘starving’ artists” who began living in the building in 1988 but an older, more successful artist with more money, said Pier Gustafson, the current president of Brickbottom Artists Association.

“We’re all getting older. As we age and leave the building, different people replace us who are not younger artists. Most younger artists can’t afford living here [today],” he said.

Like Gustafson, Deborah Olin, the Brickbottom Gallery coordinator, has seen the same major change happen at the building.

“Unlike when the original residents moved into Brickbottom,” she said, “[today’s] young artists can not afford to buy units here. The project was great for the first generation of artists.”

Within their own community, Brickbottom artists say they are dealing with the same issue that has pushed many long-time renters in the city out: gentrification.

Twenty years ago a basic 1,000 square foot empty space with kitchen and bathroom cost $63,000, today that same unit costs $250,000. “We bought at the right time – it was affordable. Now, it’s very expensive. Gentrification happens, however,” Gustafson said.

Olin disagreed that gentrification had reached the artists building but admitted when the Green Line is extended to the city “there will be some gentrification, like what happened to Davis Square. It will also make Brickbottom so much more accessible to Boston and has the potential of making the area a real neighborhood with amenities that we need. It would also be great for the Brickbottom Gallery.”

Olin acknowledged young artists find Brickbottom too costly to live in.

“It is expensive to rent and expensive to buy. New projects for affordable housing need to address this issue and come up with creative ways to help future artists financially. I don’t know how to change the course of Brickbottom.”

In the beginning, the building’s tenants grew from a dedicated few who “became kind of a family” into a “neighborhood” of artists sharing their space and lives with one another, said artist Priscilla Lamb who served on the architectural committee during the building’s development.

From 1985 to 1988, the construction years, Lamb said, “The group of us met every week or every other week on a Tuesday and talked about the building. We talked about our various reports and, then, occasionally, we’d have a barbeque together. So we got to know each other on that level pretty well. So we did become kind of a family.

“Now that we have new people who have moved in, bought into the building, it’s become a neighborhood. We know these people, and some of these people we’ve become very good friends with,” she said.

Unlike Olin and Gustafson, Lamb doesn’t see Brickbottom as necessarily attracting an older population.

“I don’t think that we can generalize. It depends on who can afford it. And it is more expensive. There’s no question about it. And we do have younger artists who have purchased into the building.”

Lamb said some twenty something artists recently bought units in Brickbottom Artists Building inspiring some of the longtime artists and signaling a rejuvenating period in the building for its next two decades.