Beginning around 1971, Heiss was living in New York City and started to set up a variety of uncommercial art spaces in downtown Manhattan. The first of these was at 10 Bleecker Street, an abandoned but very large space. (The building is now luxury apartments that rent for about $9,000 a month.) She showed sculptors there like Nancy Holt and Richard Nonas. Philip Glass—the first cousin of Heiss’s first husband—set up a rehearsal studio with his ensemble in the building.