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The way people (?) want it.

I wouldn't describe the writing as bad but I would describe it as another example of the New York Times living in a weird alternative universe. One in which "luxury loft living" equates to JC becoming "artistic". I have no problem with development but I'd never say that downtown is just now becoming "artistic". The variance between that article and reality is a bit like a Twilight Zone episode.

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I also find it funny that the article cites a guy who designs toilet brushes for Target as an example of "art and life" mixing.

That is perhaps the single worst piece of writing that has every appeared in the New York Times. Atrocious. And wholly without a point.

The Powerhouse Arts District is defunct. It is exists in name only. The 111 First Street site has been rezoned for a skyscraper.

Architect chosen for 111 first site: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/nyr ... ect.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/rea ... ef=realestate&oref=slogin

Where Home Is an Art Gallery
Timothy Ivy for The New York Times

ART and life are mixing it up more and more often these days in the realm of New Jersey real estate.

The Powerhouse Arts District, a place for artists to both live and work, is taking shape in Jersey City, and another arts district is being born amid the big old factory buildings in Orange. In Hoboken, the architect and designer Michael Graves is creating kitchens and baths for condominiums at the Maxwell Place tower.

There will be an outdoor ?art walk? at the Siena condo complex when it opens in Montclair, and the Reserve at Glen Ridge offers a community courtyard that is envisioned as an outdoor sculpture garden.

For high-end custom homes, gallery space is starting to ?almost be a given, like an elevator, or a whirlpool,? observed Pinnacle Custom?s president, Michael Cantor, whose company is building an 18,000-square-foot home in Saddle River in northern Bergen County.

Even when there isn?t a blueprint or a special district or a custom builder, a home gallery can emerge more organically, of course.

This is the case in a roomy 10th-floor condo at the top of a 40-year-old building in East Orange, where the owner has created a gallery of his own.

In the living room of Bradford Brown?s place on Prospect Street, the furniture is rather sparse ? a sofa, a television set, a few occasional tables ? but the art is definitely living large.

Mr. Brown, a noted illustrator who has recently branched into a style he calls ?sculptural painting,? fills the big room, which is glassed on one side and overlooks the city of Newark, with his vibrant images of people: photo-realist drawings, simple portraits and, the newest work, bas relief created by applying paint over concrete on canvas.

Two weeks ago, as he prepared for an exhibit of portraits, ?Legends of Jazz? at the Paterson Museum ? running through this weekend and then moving to the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark ? Mr. Brown?s home gallery had a smoky nightclub ambience even in broad daylight, emanating from the images of the legends. The group was assembled on large black canvases, their individual features evident as through a haze, their music somehow clear and sharp to the ear, even in silence.

?I used this sculptural technique to get more realistic about jazz,? said Mr. Brown, who himself plays the jazz trumpet, practicing an hour a day in the living room/gallery. ?I think giving the images texture makes them more expressive. Struggle, pain ? all the feelings and history the musician puts into the music ? I wanted those things to be felt when you see the panting.?

Mr. Brown grouped the Legends paintings on one side of the room as if the subjects were jamming. Dizzy Gillespie?s right cheek ballooned out as he blew the trumpet; it was actually a salad bowl glued to the canvas and painted over. Tito Puente?s drumsticks drew a faint arc in the darkness; real sticks glued in a fan pattern provided the visual sensation.

This scene unfolded in what is not particularly interesting space, with plain walls, utilitarian sliding glass doors, some household detritus and a few house plants as backdrop.

?I knew as soon as I saw it that this was my gallery,? Mr. Brown recalled. ?We were looking for a home, but there had to be a place for me to work and show the work.?

It was the very plainness of the 2,900-square-foot unit that appealed to him, he said, because that provided a sense of blank slates to fill.

Also, the big central living space with a large balcony was perfect for parties, informal unveilings and shows, he realized instantly, Mr. Brown said.

In the four years since moving in to the condo, Mr. Brown and his wife, Diane, have kept his art at the center of their social life. They hold big holiday parties featuring his trumpet improvisations and her secret-recipe punch. And when Mr. Brown finishes a family portrait, or a formal one ? he has done many of the official renderings of Newark City Council members ? there is always a ritual fete.

Among his other endeavors, Mr. Brown teaches art at a Newark vocational high school. So, some of his party/exhibits have a younger flavor, and the open gallery/living room floor becomes a dance hall, too.

Mr. Brown, 50, works mostly in a bedroom off the central hallway of the apartment. There is a desk piled high with binders holding pictures of his work, everything from a Fortune magazine cover of a corporate mogul to book-cover drawings of Albert Einstein, Alex Haley and Pablo Picasso to a series of illustrations developing the character of the American Girl doll Addy (the originals were purchased by Whitney Houston).

Other tables and desks hold his photographic equipment, poster-making equipment, paints and canvases that are works in progress.

Elsewhere in the apartment, rooms serve the purpose for which they were designed, but the art is omnipresent. In the dining room, illustrations of major sports figures ? ?Sweetness,? ?The Worm? and ?Magic,? among them ? preside above the dinner table and bar. The hallways, the bathrooms, the kitchen are crowded with images of larger-than-life personalities.

Mr. Brown said his own beginnings were humble. He attended a public high school in New York, concentrating on the arts, and won a scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

The penthouse space where he lives and works today had smaller beginnings too. It was originally two rental apartments, which were combined by a long-ago tenant, Ernest Booker, now the municipal judge in Montclair. Mr. Brown bought the place at the time the building was converted to condominiums four years ago.

?A lot of people have been through here in the last four years,? he said with a smile, and gestured toward the group of jazz greats. ?Some of them stayed for a while.?