After Slobodkina built her first house in Great Neck in 1948, she decided to sublet the back part of her Manhattan apartment. The front part was left unoccupied and was used by Esphyr’s sister Tamara as a studio where there hung some of Illya’s nudes and a couple of Slobodkina’s larger abstractions. The tenants, having turned out to be narcotic addicts, set fire to the apartment. Fortunately, the blaze was mostly contained to the tenants’ quarters, but the firemen emptied both the apartment and Tamara’s studio of all the interesting contents, including the paintings.