463 West Street is a 13 building complex located on the block between West Street, Washington Street, Bank Street, and Bethune Street in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. It was originally the home of Bell Telephone Laboratories between 1898 and 1966. For a time, it was the largest industrial research

Research and development

The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...

 center in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and further designated as a National Historic Landmark, as Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Many early technological inventions were developed here, including automatic telephone panel switch

Panel switch

The panel switching system was an early type of automatic telephone exchange, first put into urban service by the Bell System in the 1920s and removed during the 1970s...

es, the first experimental talking movies

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

 (1923), black and white and color TV

History of television

The history of television records the work of numerous engineers and inventors in several countries over many decades. The fundamental principles of television were initially explored using electromechanical methods to scan, transmit and reproduce an image...

, video telephones, radar

Radar

Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

, the vacuum tube

Vacuum tube

In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...

, medical equipment, the development of the phonograph

Phonograph

The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...

 record and the first commercial broadcasts

Commercial broadcasting

Commercial broadcasting is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship...

 including the first broadcast of a baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 game and the New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 with Toscanini conducting. It also served as the headquarters for the company from 1925 to the early 1960s.

The site was also the home for part of the Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

After two years of renovations by Richard Meier

Richard Meier

Richard Meier is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.- Biography :Meier is Jewish and was born in Newark, New Jersey...

, the building was reopened in 1970 as Westbeth Artists Community

Westbeth Artists Community

Westbeth Artists Housing, located at 463 West Street in the West Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan, is the largest such community in the world. This low- to middle-income rental housing project was developed with the assistance of the J.M...

 for low to middle income artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s. In addition to affordable artist housing, the complex contains a theatre, an art gallery, and a synagogue.

It was declared a National Historic Landmark

National Historic Landmark

A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...

in 1975.