The Story of SoHo: A Lofty History (Rewind)

A Summer Journey Through Neighborhoods

0:00Hey, it's the Bowery Boys. Hey.

0:16Hi there. Welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young. And I'm Tom Myers. Happy end of the summer, everybody. And it has been quite a moment, shall we say. Well, for the city, our glorious city, of course, but also for us. For instance, I know you've been traveling like crazy, Tom, and you're starting to dip into a little research of your favorite era in anticipation of a certain TV series returning to our living rooms later this year.

0:48That's right. Yeah, the Gilded Age is coming back later this fall. We're all very excited about that. So brushing up on some Gilded Age, the era, and brushing up on Gilded Age seasons one, two, and three. Just remember all of that drama that they have taken us through. And you, you have been wrapping up on the first draft of your new book. Like, my own drama, 95,000 words are down, 3,000 or so to go, maybe even less.

1:18And I've been spending time in a different era, the era of America pre-Gilded Age. In fact, if I land on the right spot, it ends right at the Gilded Age. Can't wait for everyone to read it. That book will be coming out next summer, and I will be talking a lot more about that on the road to publication date. But yeah, I'm hot under deadline, let's just say. Exciting. And so while we are working on all of these projects, we just wanted to also take, you know, take the show on a little bit of a journey.

1:51A sort of summer theme trip, Greg. Well, it is still summer. But a trip through our own archive to explore three different and very well-known and beloved neighborhoods in New York City. Yeah, three neighborhoods that have each faced a critical moment in their development. Because each of these neighborhoods that we'll be exploring occupies an incredibly central location on the New York cityscape. And at some point in the 20th century, each of these neighborhoods was forced to figure out how to adapt or react

2:27to the various pressures surrounding them. Right. Pressures in the mid-20th century. So pressures from business concerns, from real estate, pressures from crime, pressures from tourism. You know, these were pressures that affected the entire city, of course. But each of these three neighborhoods reacted to these pressures in a very different way. And because of that, these three neighborhoods changed in profoundly different ways.

2:57So when you visit each of them today, the three that we'll be presenting for the next three weeks, it'll almost feel like you're visiting three completely different cities.

Farmland and Early Settlement

3:08Yes, we start with Soho, the neighborhood that is quite literally south of Houston. And as you will hear in today's show, it is a neighborhood that has seen it all. It was farmland in the 18th century, then residential in the early 19th century. But by the mid-19th century, it had become the hot place to shop or stay in a fancy hotel or head to the theater. Or if any of you listen to the Bill the Butcher episode, get up to other shenanigans, far seedier shenanigans.

3:45Yes. Although we should note that a part of it turned a different way toward manufacturing and warehousing. And that part only grew in importance. And soon those manufacturing and warehousing functions took over most of the neighborhood by the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So then by the mid-20th century, Soho was, believe it or not, largely overlooked by most New Yorkers. But when you visit it today, and you walk over those beloved Belgian-blocked streets...

4:19Not cobblestones. ...you're looking up at buildings that look like they've hardly changed at all. And why is that? And how did that happen? That was largely a choice that was made half a century ago that still defines how we see Soho today. And ironically, that choice may have prevented many of those residents from the 1970s from being able to afford living in the neighborhood today.

4:49That is the story that we're telling today. And that, in fact, is a story, a show that we recorded back in July of 2017. So at the top of that show, I'd asked you to define Soho's borders, to which you replied on cue. You're asking me to situate? Yes. Well, in terms of its borders, obviously, I mean, it's sort of pre-packaged to be south of Houston. And pretty much everybody agrees that it's north of Canal Street, okay?

5:20Now, there is less agreement as to its eastern and western boundaries. But most people put them somewhere around West Broadway on the western side. And on the eastern side, either Crosby Street, you know, just one block east of Broadway, or another block over to Lafayette and parts of Center Street. So it really depends on who you ask. So west of Nolita and Little Italy. Right. Just west of Nolita. It was previously called the Cast Iron District or the South Houston Industrial District.

5:53The name Soho obviously is a modern invention and actually traces itself only back to the 1960s when Chester Rapkin, who was an urban theorist and a planner, used it in a report for the city. And it was the first of the cutesy little truncated neighborhood names, you know, Tribeca, Nolita, which you just mentioned, and so many others, Dumbo, we're looking at you, would follow suit. Nomad. Let's go way back before there were any blocks and buildings. Who were the first settlers in this particular area of Manhattan?

6:24Well, you know, Greg, as you discussed in a very recent episode, just two episodes ago, on New York's first black communities, this area was once under the Dutch period, referred to as the Free Negro Lots. And actually, this was the first black community on Manhattan Island for freed slaves, quote-unquote, freed slaves, because after being enslaved for 20 years, the Dutch West India Company, quote, freed their slaves and allowed them to farm.

6:54And I put that in quotes because actually their children would still be born enslaved. And of course, this was outside the city limits. It was north of that wall, which defined New Amsterdam. And they were granted that land partially as sort of a buffer between possible other warring factions like the local native people. Well, then along in the 1660s, a Dutch man named Augustine Hermann started buying up the land, buying up these properties and these farms in today's Soho.

7:25When he died in the 1680s, it all passed on to his brother-in-law, a certain Nicholas Bayard. Ah, the Bayard name enters the story. Yes, it does. The Nicholas Bayard, who was also the nephew of Mr. Peter Stuyvesant. Nicholas Bayard served as well as the mayor of New York in 1686 once the English came in. But he'd soon get into trouble, skip town, be convicted for treason, and ordered to be hanged. Yikes.

7:55But at the last minute, as fate would have it, this was annulled and he would live in New York until 1707. All of this to say that Nicholas Bayard had a huge farm and much of today's Soho falls inside just the western section of that farm and would be referred to as his West Farm. So how long during the 18th century here were people farming the land? Well, throughout the entire thing. And even as the city was growing, you know, south of Huron, thousands more people were coming

8:26to New York. There were some natural roadblocks that prevented any further northern expansion. Most notably, of course, there was steaming old collect bond. Which was located northeast of City Hall and south of the future Soho district. That's right. And along what would be today's Grand Street, there was a huge elevation called Bayard's Hill. It was over 100 feet above today's street level. So these things functioned as kind of a physical barrier. So a dirty pond and basically a small mountain.

8:58Right. So when did this land get properly developed?

Laying Out the Grid

9:02Like when did things get leveled and blocks cut out and streets arranged? Well, after the war, the Bayard family didn't do very well in the Revolutionary War and they suffered financially from it. They were forced to sell off much of the West Farm. So they started dividing it up into lots and they sold sections to the estate of, among others, prominent citizens like Aaron Burr and an Anthony Bleeker. And actually, if you look at a map, I hope that you can post this on the blog. It's a map from 1799.

9:34You see many of the streets already carved out with many of the names that we know today. There's Houston or Houston because it has an extra U in it. Street, Prince Street, Spring Street, Mercer, Thompson, Worcester, McDougal. They're all there on this map from 1799. Even Bullock Street. Bullock? Would become Broome. Oh. But the important thing is that these blocks were already laid out and they existed by the time of the Commissioner's Plan of 1811. And so because there was already this grid in place, the Commissioner's Plan then would

10:08not wipe these blocks away, but would keep them in place. Like many other mini grids, which would get destroyed. Right. This one kind of like conformed. It was fairly orderly. Close enough, right? Yeah. And so some developers did come and make the jump up, including Joseph Blackwell, who owned Blackwell's Island. And he owned a shop at the corner of what is today's Broadway and Canal. And his neighbor, Thomas Duggan, who bought up several lots on that block there and even had the street named after him.

10:39Duggan Street? Stick with me. It would soon be renamed because by this time, and we're around 1810 or so, the city with a population of about 100,000 people finally got around to draining Old Collect Pond, right? Which we've talked about in like half of our other episodes. And among other things, they did this by leveling Old Bayard Hill and dumping that dirt into the pond. And they drained that water, of course, by building a canal, which of course is the roots of today's

11:11Canal Street. But that water literally would flow out on either ends of the island. And that water went along Duggan Street, which would be renamed Canal Street. Oh. You know, funny story. You could actually float on a raft along Canal Street a lot more quickly than you can make it through traffic on today's Canal Street. That is probably true. But with the canal, with this grid of streets, we have pretty much what looks like the modern layout of what is Soho today. And this is by the 1810s.

11:41That's right. And in fact, many very prominent families did make the jump up, like John Jacob Astor, who built himself a mansion at Broadway and Prince. And, you know, Spring Street, right down the street from him, was the first street open for development. And it's still home today to the oldest homes in the historic district. If you want to go to the oldest residence, Greg, head to number 107, Spring Street, which was built by a shoemaker named Conrad Brooks around 1806.

12:12So developments are happening. Prominent families and middle class families are moving around here. It's mostly houses, townhouses, those types of things. Row houses. Yes. And there are several examples that still exist today of these federal style row houses. For example, there are several along a block of Spring Street on the south side between Worcester and West Broadway. Same with the northern side of Canal between Mercer and Green. You know, you've walked by. In this case, you've probably just been pushing your way down Canal trying to get past it.

12:42But if you look up, you'll notice on the north side of the street, these are old row houses dating from the 1820s. But something different was happening along Broadway, of course, right?

Shopping and Entertainment on Broadway

12:53Well, there were stores along Broadway, but the big change started in about the 1850s when smaller stores and mansions like Astor's would be replaced by large department stores and shopping emporiums, Greg, emporiums. Such as the E.V. Howitts store, which was built in 1856 at 488 Broadway. That's the northeast corner of Broadway and Broom. You look at that structure today, which is thankfully still with us, 92 windows, count

13:24them. And you went to Howitts to buy housewares, you know, China and silverware, etc. Even Lincoln's White House bought China at Howitts. So there was a lot of dry goods happening here on Broadway during this period, right? Well, and luxury goods, too, like across the street at the northwest corner of Grand and Broadway in 1859 was built the Lord and Taylor store. And across from that, on the northeast corner, the Brooks Brothers store, which opened in 1858. And two blocks north of that on the east side of Broadway between Spring and Prince was Tiffany

13:57and Company, opened at 550 Broadway in 1854. And in many of these cases, they opened downtown, but they moved with the masses to this location in the 1850s. And they would stay here for a couple decades before leaving the neighborhood to head off to Ladies Mile, which became the preeminent shopping center in the late 19th century and which was located north of Union Square and along 6th Avenue between 14th and 23rd Street. But I'm getting a sense by this period that on Broadway, you have these larger structures.

14:33Then a little bit further west, you had still a lot more residential. Yes, Mercer, Green, Worcester, these were lined with private residences and row houses. But Broadway wasn't just a place of department stores. It was also a place of hotels. The most glamorous of which was the St. Nicholas Hotel, which was located on the west side of Broadway between Broom and Spring on the northern half of that block. How long was the St. Nicholas open?

15:04Only until 1884, because the crowds had moved on uptown. But actually, two parts of the original hotel still stand today. If you go to 521 and number 523 Broadway, you'll notice that the building itself is very old and dates from the 1850s. So these things always go hand in hand here in New York City, Hill Street department stores and, of course, hotels. And so I think the third part of this must be some theaters. That's right.

15:34We had to give the people something to do at night, right? And indeed, this was the entertainment district in the 1850s and 1860s. The list is long of theaters and music halls and even casinos that could be found along Broadway. Some notable ones included at 514 Broadway, Wood's Minstrel Hall, which was opened in 1862 by Fernando Wood's brother Henry Wood. And on the other side of Broadway at Between Spring and Prince was P.T. Barnum's American Museum,

16:08Take Two. Oh, right, because the other one had burnt down. So this was the second location, which opened in 1865. That's right. And also burnt down. That's right. Just three years after opening. But, Tom, I think one of my favorite theaters is in this particular neighborhood during this period. Are you talking about Niblo's Garden? Oh, yes. Yes. So Niblo's Garden, which, not to oversell our recent episodes, but you just ran the first Broadway musical, a show from the first about the Black Crook.

16:39Yes. That debuted at Niblo's Garden in 1866, and Niblo's Garden was located on the northern side of Prince between Broadway and Crosby. In 1828, William Niblo had converted an outdoor arena space into what they called a pleasure garden, called Sans Souci, which he would then redevelop and rename Niblo's Garden and Theater in 1834. And this was a place that served many purposes. It was originally a pleasure garden, but then, of course, was most famous for its 3,000-seat theater,

17:14which had lofty productions. Yes, and people in the lofts. So, yeah, this entire stretch had become, you know, New York's capital of entertainment and shopping and tourism. You could get something to eat and drink, by the way, at many establishments, including one at 94 Prince Street at the corner of Mercer, which opened in 1847. Now, in the early days, this place alternated between being a grocery store and a bar, but it finally settled on being a saloon in 1867 and would operate under various different names

17:47until finally Michael Finnelli bought it in 1922, and it has since kept that name, Finnelli Cafe, even though the Finnelli family sold it in 1982. But it's a place that you and I love. We had lunch there this week. And it traces back to this period, at least in its original form. And is either the second, third, or fourth oldest drinking establishment in the city, depending on how you count, you know, continuously operating, etc. And what day of the week you're talking to whoever.

18:18Yeah. That's a lot going on in these streets.

The Notorious Red Light District

18:21Um, but that wasn't the only thing happening. No. Finally, I mean, if there's shopping and eating and pleasure gardening and hotels, then it naturally follows that there would also be brothels. And indeed, the blocks that were running parallel to Broadway, Crosby to the east, and Mercer and Green to the west, became the most notorious red light district in the city. And they had something to offer for everyone, all classes, all ethnicities, all tastes.

18:53There were even guidebooks that were written to guide tourists through the brothel scene of this neighborhood. Between 1850 and 1870s, it's reported that almost half of all of New York's houses of ill reputes were located in buildings around here, in former boarding houses, those types of things. Which is really strange to me because it's going on at the same time as these big, lavish theaters and hotels. A lot of this has to do with the idea of being before electric street lamps.

19:26So the life of the street would become something quite different than it was during the day. And this would parallel what would happen into this area in the 1960s and 70s.

19:37Tom, when you listed all these street names earlier and they all seemed very familiar. That's right. There's actually one more street that you didn't list. It was named Loren's Street. Loren's Street. Yeah, it was also a north-south street. And it had such a surly reputation with all of these brothels that it was actually nicknamed Rotten Row. Good grief. Got to steer clear of Rotten Row after dark. Well, eventually they wanted to extend Fifth Avenue, you know, that had run north of here.

20:07They wanted to extend it down towards the area of today's financial district. So they had to expand that. And because they couldn't have all of these fancy carriages running through old Rotten Row, they decided to change the name of the street in hopes that that would change its reputation. So they would change that name first to South Fifth Avenue and then to West Broadway in 1896. And that is what the street is named today. But then when they built the elevated railroad, they decided to build it along here also.

20:40And so that's the street was expanded even further. So this particular street has gone through a lot of changes even before the 1880s. All right. So these things are all well and good and interesting, but it does seem like we're missing one key ingredient to Soho that makes it so iconic today.

The Rise of Cast Iron Architecture

20:58That ingredient would be cast iron architecture. Now, I'm glad you mentioned ingredients, Tom. You have a... I didn't even know what I was saying. You have a very opulent kitchen with appliances of great sophistication. Thank you, Greg. Do you happen to have any cast iron cookware? I do. I use it to make burgers, you know, in winter. Yeah. I mean, many people have them. The waffle irons, Dutch ovens, griddles. Many of these things are often cast iron. That's right. And they can be very heavy.

21:29Yeah. I mean, but it's brilliant to cook with. And it used to once be brilliant to build with. An iron carbon alloy, which melts at a lower temperature than pure iron, low enough that you can pour it into molds. Now, this use of iron, of this particular kind of iron, has been around for centuries. But it was in the 18th century, beginning of the early 19th century, that great strides in foundries and in pouring molds, things became much improved.

22:01And so that cast iron, all of a sudden, which had seemed like a very expensive technology, was now very cheap. And people could begin using it to actually construct buildings. So the same iron that's in my griddle could be used to construct a glorious facade. Tom, your griddle is like a distant cousin to the grand structures of Soho. Very distant. Now, this all began happening around the 1850s and only, you know, grew with prominence through the next few decades.

22:35What you could do is make tall buildings. So up to six stories, that was quite tall for the day, without making large foundation walls. You know, up to this time, what were people making buildings out of? Masonry, brick. Yeah. Well, now you could construct them with gorgeous ornamentation that looked like they were made of stone, but were actually made of this cheaper material and stronger material. You could use it both to create ornamentation and also to create structural components of a building.

23:08So these foundries could use molds to make parts of buildings. And the builders would then paint over them to make them look not like iron at all, but look like stone or marble. Right. I mean, throughout the decades, it even became fashionable to kind of leave it looking a little ironish. And you'll see many different examples of all different styles of cast iron architecture here in this area. What also cast iron allowed was the construction of large windows so that natural light could pour in in a period where people only had gas light.

23:43So you could have higher ceilings with bigger windows and less space devoted to structure because they were so strong. So it just gave everything a lighter and airier appearance. Yeah, it's made this real estate more valuable, more cost effective. You could use every square inch of it. The popularity of cast iron is thanks in no small part to a man named James Bugardus, who was an inventor who popularized and marketed cast iron construction. He even had his own cast iron factory that was built in 1848 that was located on the corner of Dwayne and Center Street.

24:19Wait, Dwayne and Center Street, that's kind of over by five points. Weirdly close to five points, actually, during this period. This was the first cast iron building in the world. Why do we know this? Because, Tom, I found a very irate letter to the editor in the New York Times from July 28th, 1853. Quote, To your editor, in your paper I observed the following remarks, that the matter of iron construction on a large scale was and is entirely new in this country.

24:53No edifice entirely of iron yet existed in the United States. That is a mistake, as the building at the corner of Center and Dwayne Street, erected in 1848, is built entirely of cast iron, and being filled with heavy machinery, has well tested the strengths and stability of that mode of building. And it is not only the first building erected entirely of cast iron in this country, but the first in any part of the world. By correcting the above-mentioned error, you will much oblige.

25:23Yours respectfully, James Begardis. Ah, correcting the record. So, this was a new building form right at the time that New York City was booming, and New York loved its ornamentation, and it wanted something new. It wanted something that was uniquely American, and that's what cast iron offered. So, we were talking about department stores, which would obviously benefit from having high ceilings and giant windows to let in tons of light and help out shoppers and just be a more appealing experience.

25:55But others were using the same cast iron technology. Yes, namely, warehouses. So, the area west of Broadway would be filled with hundreds of warehouses. So, part of the reason is that the shipping concerns of New York City were now moving over, transitioning to the west side of town. Why were they doing that? Well, in the late 1860s, Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt built his St. John's Terminal, built as a terminus for the Hudson River Railroad, where vast goods were coming through for import and export, and there were also the growing port and market districts of the west side.

26:39So, all of these warehouses were supporting those industries, as well as supporting the department stores that were up and down Broadway. So, warehouses and those mercantile businesses were moving from the seaport area, transitioning, moving as close to that terminal as possible, and all of these blocks were open and available. Yeah, and they were arriving here around the period of cast iron architecture. There was even a cast iron foundry just a couple blocks away in the area of Soho.

27:10And they were just ripping down, I guess, the residences. Yeah, most of the residences were gone, although obviously a few remain, as you said, to be replaced by what I would call a very uniform style of architecture. Most of these buildings are five to six stories tall, which was tall for the day. This height limitation or this height restriction makes the district rather unique today. I can't imagine that there was strict zoning in the 1850s and 60s. No. Why would they only go five or six floors?

27:40It was practical because it was about all that they could go. And this is even before the days of, like, big freight elevators, which would come along shortly. So, the buildings couldn't be that tall. And even cast iron had its limits. Now, most of these buildings are white or cream, have those kinds of exteriors, large windows with some kind of standard cornice on them. And you'll very rarely see the types of things on more masonry marble type buildings. You'll rarely see gargoyles and things like that.

28:13But these colors that you're talking about, and certainly if you stand along Green Street today and you look up and down and see those cast iron facades of these warehouses, there are many, many different colors. That's all paint. It's all paint. Right. Cast iron became the face of the early Gilded Age and became really a signature of New York architecture. Walt Whitman actually even wrote about cast iron in his poem, Manahatta, in Leaves of Grass. Quote, So, the Howitt Building, by the way, which you mentioned, is probably the best known example of cast iron architecture in New York City.

29:00Some have called it the first skyscraper. And this is the building at the northeast corner of Broome and Broadway, at 488 Broadway. Also, the Howitt Building, speaking of elevators, was the first to install an Otis elevator for passengers. For passengers, right. But I like Walt Whitman's little ode to cast iron. He makes it sound very elegant. Mm-hmm. Well, and for a while it was associated with elegance. But there was almost too much indulgence in cast iron in this district.

29:33Too much frivolity? Well, there was just too much of the same. Because what happened when you have all these warehouses built in the same style is that it couldn't keep other types of businesses in the region. It became a warehouse district. And, of course, with New York's constantly moving northward, the theaters and the shops and everything soon left the neighborhood. They were also, of course, scared off by the brothels, not surprisingly. Well, okay, that makes sense that there would be some warehouse fatigue.

30:03But is that the only reason that cast iron fell out of fashion? Well, there's also a little dangerous element to this. Because cast iron buildings are not very fireproof. As we'll see, the cast iron buildings will earn a rather morose nickname. Now, when I was looking through old newspaper clippings of just, like, searching on the names of the streets here, I am not kidding you when I tell you that most of the articles that I ran into from around the 1860s to 1880s were about fires.

30:34Oh. But then, finally, steel frame construction would then come along in the 1880s, which would inspire the skyscraper age. And would prove to be a cheaper and even lighter building material. Right. Of course, skyscrapers would help define many other neighborhoods. Not so much Soho, which is, at this point, the start of the 20th century, beginning to be left behind. And that is because many of the department stores and the theaters and the hotels had left the area by the 1880s and moved uptown.

31:08Even some of the brothels had left. So where did that leave Soho and these amazing cast iron structures? We'll get to that story after this.

Decline and Hell's Hundred Acres

31:19Okay, so Greg, you left us really at the end of the 19th century, by which point many of the fancy department stores and the theaters and the hotels had moved farther north, uptown. But there was still industry happening on the side streets, light industry, warehouses. Manufacturing. And some of these light industries would stay through the mid-20th century. But broadly speaking, in the 20th century, Soho was a neighborhood that was in decline.

31:49Its heyday was over. Right. And many of the buildings that had been constructed, even for those side streets and for industrial uses, were no longer really relevant. They were sort of outdated. Manufacturing had changed. And it required heavier machinery. And these buildings were, you know, by the mid-20th century, no longer really suitable for that sort of manufacturing. And actually, many of them were deemed fire traps. They were unsuitable even for workers to be in.

32:21Well, people could build larger storage units further away because you had better transportation. Right. Well, yeah, because modern factories required trucks to be able to get to them. And anybody who's driven a truck through Soho is going to be stopping at Finnelli's on the way home to recover. Quite a challenge. So, right. They didn't have the infrastructure hub to it. Gone were the days when they were shipping things out of St. John's freight terminal. That was gone, replaced by the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.

32:55And industry had changed, moved either uptown, say, to the Garment District, but many of it had moved to outer boroughs, to the Bronx, to Brooklyn, or elsewhere in the country. But some industry managed to stick around this area. Right. There were some print shops that stayed, some light industry manufacturers of odds and ends. And there were even some sweatshops operating. But it was mostly a neighborhood in decline and buildings were becoming so unsafe and not up to the fire codes that it got a new moniker, a new nickname given to it by the fire commissioner, Edward Cavanaugh, Jr., who called it Hell's Hundred Acres.

33:36Hmm. Soho was sort of the core of that, although that, quote, hundred acres really stretched the sort of length of the island around this period. There was a lot of hell. Yeah, it actually stretched all the way down to Chambers Street. But it was basically these sorts of structures that he was referring to. Right. He was looking at these old warehouses that would often still be filled with old flammable supplies and trash and other flammable items. They would catch fire, sometimes under mysterious circumstances.

34:09And firemen would have to rush into these unsafe structures and risk their lives putting out fires in places, you know, they might find doors nailed shut, fire escapes not working. And one of the problems of Soho's warehouses as well is that there would be shaftways that were constructed right up against the front facade next to the door. Sometimes, you know, in a smoke filled building on fire, firemen would break through the window, enter the building only to fall down the shaftway, which is why today when you're walking around in Soho, you'll see signs that say shaftway on the windows.

34:43Those signs are preserved. But there are still some homes around here. There were still buildings, residences that were around. Were people moving into them still? Were people still living there? Well, you know, the area that we've mostly been talking about, those that make up the Soho cast iron historic district, these buildings were zoned for commercial and industrial use for the most part. There were very few buildings in these blocks that were zoned for residential living. A notable exception was an Italian enclave that was living in the western section of Soho, west of West Broadway, in tenement-style apartment buildings that stretched from here up to the West Village.

35:25Many, if not most, of those structures are still there today. And there are even a couple establishments that trace themselves back to this period, including there's a storefront for the old Vesuvio Bakery. Right, at 160 Prince Street. That was started in 1920 by the Dappolito family. It's got a fabulous lime green storefront, and it was an Italian bakery. They sold Italian bread and biscuits. And one of the only parks, one of the only open spaces here in this area, is actually a small playground named Vesuvio Playground.

Fighting the Lower Manhattan Expressway

36:01And that's just right around the corner from the bakery. Now, this would not be a history of New York neighborhoods in the 20th century without the appearance of our old friend Robert Moses. And Moses, I'm sure, was a huge fan of this area. Oh, my God. He loved decrepit warehouses. No, he had been planning, actually, since the 1940s to ram an elevated expressway across lower Manhattan. Actually, he had been planning to ram expressways throughout Manhattan.

36:33There was a lower Manhattan, a mid-Manhattan, a Harlem expressway. He worked tirelessly, you know, to modernize many aspects of the city's infrastructure and transportation networks, you know, in his mad dash to keep the city relevant and functional in the automobile age. He thought that, you know, if the city was to survive, there had to be expressways. People had to be able to get around, buy car, had to be able to park their car. There needed to be a big leap forward in the modern city.

37:04And that didn't make him very sympathetic to the plight of a neighborhood like Soho, which he looked at and saw dilapidated, slummy warehouses. And he looked at and thought this would make the perfect spot to put my lower Manhattan expressway connecting the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge with a fork that went down to the Manhattan Bridge with an elevated, beautiful expressway over and through Broom Street.

37:35And all you would need to do is demolish a few unused warehouses and, of course, blocks and blocks of crowded tenement areas. It would have required the destruction of more than a dozen blocks of Soho and Little Italy and displaced nearly 2,000 families. Fortunately, the neighborhood fought back. It was through the activism of neighbors and concerned citizens who formed the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway, including Jane Jacobs, most notably, who had already been fighting Moses for a long time.

38:08All over the city. And they demonstrated and fought the project, rallied public support behind the residents of the neighborhood. It was a long and bumpy road. And like, you know, Greg, other pieces of really bad legislation, it wouldn't die. It just wouldn't go away. You thought it was done, right? You thought they wouldn't really want to hurt those people. But they just kept reintroducing it. They introduced it three times in the 1960s. Wow. And so they just kept trying to ram this down the legislature, ram this through the city.

38:42No matter how bad it was for people. But in fact, the citizens revolted and it finally, finally died. For more information, check out our shows on Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Those are episodes 100 and 200. And so here we are then in the early 1970s with the city's finances in the dumps and the old big warehouses and the faded cast iron palaces sitting around the neighborhood, mostly underutilized. And zoning laws were preventing legally renting them out for residential purposes.

39:18Broom Street and the neighborhood had been saved from Robert Moses' destruction. But it still wasn't what we would call in great shape.

Artists and Loft Living

39:27And it wasn't attractive to most New Yorkers as a place to go to work or place to go live. But something interesting is happening in New York in the 1960s. Well, a lot of interesting things, obviously, but one that I'm going to mention in particular that would change the fate of this warehouse district and would actually set up a model for all similar areas in New York going forward and even around the country. And that is the transformation of commercial lofts, which we've been speaking about, into residential lofts, places where people live, large rooms, well lit, few amenities because they weren't a lot of these places didn't have, of course, modern plumbing.

40:11They were accessed perhaps only by freight elevators. Now, who would benefit from these kind of unique sort of spaces? In what professions do you think a large room with lavish windows, who would benefit most from this? I see where you're going with this, Greg. Probably people who, say, are painting on giant canvases that they need, oh, I don't know, a big studio space for that are too large to fit in small cramped apartments.

40:42I'm glad I've painted this picture for you, Tom, because there's a lot of deterioration happening in New York during this period. But one place where New York is thriving is it's become the heart of the international art scene, thanks to abstract expressionism and all these New York-based artists in the 50s and 60s. So artists begin eyeing these spaces and they're unused and thinking, wow, like, imagine the fantastic work that I could do in spaces like this.

41:15But, of course, most of them were zoned for commercial and manufacturing use only, not residential, which is important because a manufacturing zone didn't have to have certain kinds of amenities. Emergency situations were different. There were far fewer modern conveniences in a manufacturing zone, for instance. Well, so then given these restrictions, how were artists able to move into these loft spaces? Well, they had to organize to get the city's attention.

41:47In the early 1960s, there was an organization called the Artists Tenants Association, which petitioned the city for the right to live and work in zones that were not residential. Now, this being the 60s, the city agreed to a certain extent. And I'm talking generally speaking at this point, all of New York City, any place that was not a residential zone, in a small number of places, artists could live if the building they lived in had the initials A.I.R. on the front of the building, artist in residence.

42:19Uh-huh. And did you have to be an approved artist? To do it legally, you would have to literally be labeled an artist in the eyes of the city. Okay. There was an artist certification committee, which would meet with a potential artist, and that artist would have to justify why they needed to live in a particular space. They would be granted a certificate of occupancy, which would be needed. It's really important.

42:49And you know why? Why? Because you would need that certificate to get loans from the bank because you needed a lot of money to refurbish these places. You were doing that yourself. Uh-huh. You were renovating this on your own. So these artist lofts were not ready to move in. They were not in move-in condition. Far from it. Definitely not. But this also kind of underscores another thing that you kind of read between the lines of these histories during this period. These weren't necessarily starving artists at first.

43:23They would later be artists of lesser means. But the ones who had to come in initially had to have had some kind of money. Because they had to buy the spaces or they had to rework them into livable spaces. Yes, exactly. As a result of these initial artists coming in, they were able to make these places quite desirable and then drawing other artists to the area. Do you know, Tom, that today the area is still zoned and that you have to actually be a certified artist to live there? It's since been rezoned for light manufacturing and a lot of these artists are shoehorned in because they are indeed, you know, lightly manufacturing their artwork.

44:03But to be clear, there are plenty of now zoned residential buildings as well. So a warehouse can be then converted into a loft-style apartment building. Sure, sure. And many have. Okay, so back to our story. When did the first wave of artists settle in Soho? This would be in the mid-1960s, mid to late 1960s. The first artist loft space, what we consider the first, is 80 Worcester Street, which became the home base for the art collective The Fluxus Group.

44:38And artists like Yoko Ono and George Brecht have worked for The Fluxus Group. And this was intended to be an artist cooperative. Yes, which would, of course, drive other artists to the area. But it's also, of course, driving galleries to the area as well. And so what's happening is by the mid-1970s, Soho has become the center of the American art world. But it's not only artists, of course, by this period. It's musicians, photographers, filmmakers, dancers.

45:10They're all venturing into this district, you know, whether legally or not, depending on how they're zoned and what their jobs are. But what creates this kind of, like, magical allure of the area, I mean, what I glamorize it, is the idea of it looks very bombed out during the day. You'd walk down these streets and they'd be desolate and perhaps even slightly dangerous. So there was something gritty. Very, very gritty. It was like the essence of New York grittiness in the 1970s. So hardly today's Soho.

45:42No, absolutely not. It would even, it would maybe even be forlorn at night. But you would have all these destinations, these galleries, and soon there would be more than just galleries. There would be bars, restaurants, alternative nightclubs. So mid-1970s. Okay, something else very important to Soho happened in the mid-1970s.

Preservation and the Historic District

46:04A woman named Margot Gale, who was a preservationist, an urban activist, and a journalist. Well, she was also a huge fan and even scholar of cast iron architecture. And she turned her preservationist zeal to preserving Soho's cast iron structures. Structures that were being transformed from the inside by this period by many artists. Well, and some which, you know, because they were not protected at all, were also being ripped down and replaced by parking lots and gas stations and other abominations.

46:38So, and so she founded in 1970 the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture, and she valiantly fought to have the remaining cast iron structures protected from the wrecking ball. Let's not forget that just a few years earlier, Penn Station had been razed to the ground. And it's because of her work and other preservationists that joined her that in 1973, this area that we've been talking about was designated the Soho Cast Iron Historic District, which includes 26 blocks of Soho and 500 buildings.

47:09And its borders would be nudged a little bit, extended in 2010. In 1978, it would be made a national historic landmark. So we've got artists coming in. We have the area being then protected in the 1970s. So there's a lot of cachet. So much so, in fact, that in 1974, New York Magazine wrote an article calling Soho, quote, The Most Exciting Place to Live in New York, which obviously means it's doomed, right?

47:40I mean, depending on how you want to define doomed, because that means that there's a lot of glamour coming through here. A lot of these galleries are uptown galleries that are hoofing it in the new downtown, but things are becoming very upscale here at the same time. Right. And, you know, like used to happen down in Chinatown, people from uptown would come down to slum it down in Soho. That's a good parallel, yeah. And to check out, you know, check out the scene. So much so that the artists were fighting back.

48:10In fact, the piece in the New York Magazine prompted a quick rebuttal from the Soho newsletter on June 7th, 1974, which was published by the Soho Artists Association. And they published an article entitled The Most Exciting Place to Destroy in New York, in which they lament, you know, these these new moneyed uptowners. And I found that on the Soho Memory Project, which is a fabulous website. I would I would say that Soho revolutionizes both what is a cool neighborhood and then what is a neighborhood that is over.

48:44Right. Because then by the late 1970s and early 1980s, clothing boutiques are moving in because, of course, they're also appealed to a high end clientele. So if people are shopping for art in galleries, maybe they'll buy an expensive dress. And so then that sort of developed into the 1980s, 1990s. And the boutiques started drawing larger retail stores. And soon the area became zoned for even larger shopping experiences. My personal early 90s experience back then was being a sheepish tourist, kind of like walking around Soho thinking, oh, this place is dark and cool.

49:24But then seeing clothing stores, which I could never afford to buy anything in next to at night places that would open up their gratings to avant garde theater. Very cool. And I remember wandering down in the early 90s to go to Canal Jeans, you know, to pick up some baggy stonewashed jeans and maybe some Doc Martens and then perhaps walk all the way up to pick up some club wear at Le Chateau. Oh, wow. What's interesting, you know, is that is a decade later in 2004, Canal Street Jeans would be long gone and replaced by Bloomingdale's.

50:02So the upscale department store would move back to the glorious old cast iron facades of Broadway. By that time, the art scene, which had kind of defined and discovered Soho, if you will, had pretty much moved out. Now, the artists are still there today in those lofts, but the gallery scene would shift and move over to West Chelsea, today the area underneath the High Line. According to a 2010 report in The New York Times doing an interview with a sociology professor from Brooklyn College, quote,

50:38Soho has twice as many chain stores as boutiques now and three times as many boutiques as art galleries. So that's where we're at with Soho today. Well, that's a surprising downer that you just sprung on us, Greg, that you just springed on us. But it's not all a downer. As you walk around Soho today, you still have these magnificent cast iron structures to behold on not just Broadway, but all of these side streets.

51:11And even if they are chain stores and department stores, they do make a nice alternative to doing your shopping in Midtown. It is true that Broadway and the side streets can become incredibly overtaxed, shall we say, with other pedestrians. And that sometimes, you know, if you're just trying to walk around and look up and admire the cast iron facades, you can be literally lifted off the ground by Italian and French tourists on their way to Uniqlo. But there are times to go to Soho when you can really take it in on your own.

51:46I strongly recommend going during my favorite time, the early morning, when you really have Broadway, not to mention the side streets, to yourself. I would also recommend walking down West Broadway, where many of the art galleries still exist. And many of them actually trace back to the late 1960s. And so you can still see some kind of some beautiful and stunning artwork there. I like walking through Soho around 5 or 6 p.m. when the sun is setting and hitting those cast iron facades.

52:16Very photogenic. But if you'd like to relive Soho in the 70s and 80s, I recommend two Hollywood movies. The Eyes of Laura Mars with Faye Dunaway and the Martin Scorsese movie After Hours, which almost entirely takes place here in Soho.

Previewing the Next Neighborhood

52:36Next week on The Bowery Boys. Brooklyn, across the river. The city of friendly people sometimes called Dodgerville. Brooklyn keeps on growing with a population of almost 3 million people. For Brooklyn is also a great industrial city with miles upon miles of waterfront. Brooklyn buys what the world has to sell and sells to the world about everything under the sun. Visit our website, BoweryBoysHistory.com, where you can find our entire catalog of podcasts and many, many, many other posts and subjects related to New York City history.

53:12That's BoweryBoysHistory.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Blue Sky, all Facebook. I said Facebook. I'll say it again. You can find us on most of the other. Oh, TikTok. We're also there. Wow. You're naming things that didn't even exist in 2017 when the show came out. Or at least we certainly didn't know about most of them. We didn't know what they were. No. Yes. But another thing that didn't exist at the time was Bowery Boys Walks, our walking tour company, where we lead visitors and New Yorkers alike on small group walking tours through New York's historic neighborhoods.

53:49And we tell stories sometimes inspired by the podcast, sometimes unearthed just for those walking tours themselves. We have the city's best licensed tour guides working together with us, and we're so excited about all of the tours that we have. Many of them are downtown in the Soho area. We also go uptown around the Gilded Age mansions of Fifth Avenue, and we leave Manhattan for several of the tours as well. Please visit BoweryBoysWalks.com to see what upcoming tours you can join.

54:20You can buy an individual ticket or book a private tour for your family, your company, or your group of friends. Meanwhile, over at Patreon.com slash Bowery Boys, Tom and I record a podcast exclusive to those who support us on Patreon called Side Streets. And actually, the next episode of Side Streets, we'll be ruminating about the three neighborhoods that we're featuring in this new little mini-series, including Soho, which you've just heard, on top of spilling some more details about those other projects that we have been working on, are still working on.

54:56So you can find all of that over at Patreon.com slash Bowery Boys. Yes, ruminating about part one in this three-part journey that we're all on, looking at how neighborhoods changed or didn't change, and in doing so, actually changed as well. Soho was first, we showed what happened, when the neighborhood was entirely protected from development. Next week, a totally different situation. This episode was re-edited and remastered by Kieran Gannon.

55:27So thank you very much for listening. Have a great New York week, whether you live here or not. See you real soon.