the direction of developer Dixon Bain. The project was the first significant public commission of Richard Meier. Westbeth opened in 1970 for artists, dancers, musicians, actors, writers and film makers. Artists of all disciplines are admitted as tenants in Westbeth after review by a committee of residential tenants in their discipline. They must also meet certain income requirements at the time of admission. (The waiting list for new residential tenants was closed in 2007.) As of 2014, residential tenants paid an average of $800 a month in rent, including electricity, approximately one-third to one-quarter the market rate for comparable space. In addition to its residential component, there are also large and small commercial spaces, performance spaces, and rehearsal and artists' studios. Westbeth is home to a number of major cultural organizations, including The New School for Drama, the LAByrinth Theater Company, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the first LGBT synagogue in New York and the largest in the world, with more than 800 members. The space occupied by The New School was previously occupied by an Off-Broadway theatre. Westbeth was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 8, 2009, after the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), using funds from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, commissioned historic preservationist Andrew Dolkart to write a nominating report to list Westbeth on the State and National Register of Historic Places. The research included interviews with several key figures in the conversion of the former Bell Telephone Labs to the nation's first subsidized housing complex for artists, including architect Richard Meier, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and Joan Davidson, the daughter of J.M. Kaplan who coordinated the founding of Westbeth. Following Prof. Dolkart's submission, and citing the "extraordinary significance" required to list sites on the State and National Register of Historic Places which are less than 50 years old, the New York State Historic Preservation Board unanimously approved the nomination of Westbeth to the State Register of Historic Places. As part of an effort to extend landmark protections to the Far West Village, GVSHP spearheaded a campaign to have the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designate the entire complex as an individual landmark. In response, the LPC committed to do so in 2004 as part of a broader series of landmark designations it agreed to do in the area. It was not until 2009,