Opening the doors on Donald Judd's New York house

Donald Judd's New York house

The five-storey cast-iron house with 60 windows in New York's SoHo, which Donald Judd purchased in 1968 for $68,000, will throw open its doors to the public this month.

The house, at 101 Spring Street, which served as Judd's studio and main residence with his family until his death in 1994, has undergone a $23m renovation, but little else has changed in its content. Visitors will be able to go on guided tours of the house Judd designed floor by floor and filled with his artworks and furniture as well as works by other artists, including Marcel Duchamp and Frank Stella. For Judd, the building's open space was the perfect place to create a permanent installation for the works. He decked out his spacious fifth-floor bedroom with a floor-to-ceiling 1970 Dan Flavin flourescent light piece, a 1970 Judd-designed platform bed and a 19th-century Italian settee. Walking through Judd's former home, including his studio with rough plaster walls and minimalist kitchen, visitors can admire his collection of more than 500 objects, including an oak roll-top desk that Judd found in the building and kept.

His son, Flavin Judd, who also lived on the fifth floor in a small bedroom, refers to the home improvement as “101 Spring Street's 140-year check up”, preserving the original building as well as Judd's modifications to it. “Unfortunately it needed surgery, but it shouldn't need anything else for at least another 140 years.”

101 Spring Street, New York, is open from 18 June. (www.judd foundation.org)