In 1980, when painter John Alexander moved to New York from his native Texas, it was into one of downtown's great untouched spaces, with 20-foot-high ceilings of pressed tin, amazing light, and virtually no walls. The kitchen area consisted of little more than a "raggedy old stove"; he slept in a storage room in the back. "It was a typical 1970s loft," Alexander says. "Which means that it was pretty raw."Over the next decade, he walled off a couple of real bedrooms, improved the baths and the kitchen equipment, and divided the space into work and living areas. Still, the place retained its essential "loftiness": There was a wide-open studio in which to paint and an even more enormous space in which to live.
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