It is 9 o'clock in the morning, in Pat Oliphant's third-floor studio in his home.

"Three days ago, we didn't know what was going on," said Lincoln Mayne, 34, a fashion designer who rents a third-floor studio.

His next door neighbor, Virginia Dildine, an artist, can see the cars whipping around the race track from the window of her third-floor studio.

The play, produced and directed by Mr. Zittel, will run through April 2 in his third-floor studio.

"To come back feels great, but it's definitely an eerie feeling," said Lincoln Mayne, 34, a fashion designer who returned to his third-floor studio.

As we made our way from the second-floor living space to his third-floor studio, we walked through gargantuan rooms filled with gargantuan paintings.

Elements of the third-floor studios sometimes find their way into the galleries downstairs, and the artists open their studios to museum visitors twice a year.

Even the third-floor studio had been ransacked.

Rents range from $1,275 for a third-floor studio to about $4,100 for a two-bedroom with a formal dining room on the ninth floor.

Mrs. Coopersmith remembers the third-floor studio where her father made toys and models as "a magical place, something like Santa's workshop."