Peter and Elsje Brandt moved to the Upper West Side in 2008 after leaving their classic six loft in the Flatiron District, where the couple had lived since 1982. "All the photographers were there, and the models. The building used to be all artists who needed space to work," Elsje recalls of the Flatiron building where she and Peter raised their family, and grew a photography practice. But then the bankers and hedge funders started moving into the building, Elsje says, and it lost the sense of communityartistic or otherwisethat she once knew it to have. The Brandts found a similar sense of belonging in the West 108th Street building they now call home. "It's like Greenwich Village in the 1980s," Elsje says, "This building still has a lot of academics, creatives, opera singers. There's a real community here."
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