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The artists that a 10-story Beaux Arts building on the south side of Bryant Park was built to house in 1901 began moving out many decades ago. The painter Winslow Homer and others, followed many years later by photographers Edward Steichen and Irving Penn, all decamped. In came tenants from the rising ranks of the area's largest industry, the garment makers and designers. Among them was Liz Claiborne, who founded her company in 1976 at what is officially known as the Bryant Park Studios. Ms. Claiborne expanded to three floors of the building before relocating two years later.
Today, the property's long record of full occupancy stands unbroken, even as the place continues to cater almost exclusively to garment outfits. Tenants at the building, on the southeast corner of West 40th Street and Sixth Avenue, range from Alice and Olivia in the ground-floor retail space to fashion labels Joie, Vince and White + Warren upstairs.
"No matter how the garment district changes, fashion will always have a home here," said Michael Seeve of the Clifton, N.J.-based Mountain Development Corp, which has owned and managed the 70,000-square-foot building since 1979.
That constancy comes as change has swept the neighborhood. The once dilapidated, crime-ridden Bryant Park had its rebirth as a thriving amenity...