I was desperate for space,” says artist Mark Beard. This was back in the nineties, when Manhattan real estate was still a somewhat realistic venture for a painter-sculptor. He looked at two lofts for sale in his building on West 38th Street. One had “a lot of shag carpeting and platforms; you know, that seventies paneling. Some of the windows were painted over,” says Beard. “It was pretty scary. The broker called it ‘Bamm-Bamm’s cave.’” Beard and his partner have been in the 3,700-square-foot space for fourteen years now, and the shag carpeting has given way to an apartment that includes a sun-drenched studio big enough to hold a life-drawing group, a south-facing terrace overgrown with plants, and a manorial library made (by the artist) using lumber and plywood from Home Depot.

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