Description
SoHo, short for South of Houston Street, is the Manhattan neighborhood that runs roughly from Houston to Canal Streets, between West Broadway and Lafayette Street. Today it is known for its fashion boutiques, art galleries, cafés and restaurants, all inside some of the most beautiful 19th-century buildings in the city.
The first thing to look at is the architecture. The cast-iron facades are what make SoHo special: in the 19th century merchants dressed their warehouses and shops in columns and arches molded in foundries, often painted to look like stone, with tall windows that flooded the floors with light.
About 250 cast-iron buildings stand in New York City, and most are here, in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District.
Walk along Broadway, Greene Street and the other cross streets to see them. Between the shops, look at the loft windows, the ornate cornices and the old loading docks, and don't miss the side streets, still paved with Belgian blocks.
The shops range from trendy upscale boutiques to the big international chains, and on weekends the sidewalks are crowded. The art galleries that gave the area its fame have mostly left, but some remain, and the artists' lofts upstairs still shape its style.
By the 1950s SoHo was "Hell's Hundred Acres": sweatshops and small factories by day, deserted streets by night. Robert Moses wanted to run an elevated expressway right through it, the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
Preservationists, Jane Jacobs among them, and the artists who lived there stopped the highway. The artists had come for the huge, cheap lofts, living in them illegally, until in 1971 the city let certified artists live where they worked.
Then galleries arrived, then boutiques, then money: the "SoHo effect" became a byword for gentrification. In the mid-1990s many galleries moved to Chelsea, and the shops took over. Along Broadway, grand marble stores had stood since the mid-19th century: Lord & Taylor and Tiffany & Company opened here.
The first thing to look at is the architecture. The cast-iron facades are what make SoHo special: in the 19th century merchants dressed their warehouses and shops in columns and arches molded in foundries, often painted to look like stone, with tall windows that flooded the floors with light.
About 250 cast-iron buildings stand in New York City, and most are here, in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District.
Walk along Broadway, Greene Street and the other cross streets to see them. Between the shops, look at the loft windows, the ornate cornices and the old loading docks, and don't miss the side streets, still paved with Belgian blocks.
The shops range from trendy upscale boutiques to the big international chains, and on weekends the sidewalks are crowded. The art galleries that gave the area its fame have mostly left, but some remain, and the artists' lofts upstairs still shape its style.
By the 1950s SoHo was "Hell's Hundred Acres": sweatshops and small factories by day, deserted streets by night. Robert Moses wanted to run an elevated expressway right through it, the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
Preservationists, Jane Jacobs among them, and the artists who lived there stopped the highway. The artists had come for the huge, cheap lofts, living in them illegally, until in 1971 the city let certified artists live where they worked.
Then galleries arrived, then boutiques, then money: the "SoHo effect" became a byword for gentrification. In the mid-1990s many galleries moved to Chelsea, and the shops took over. Along Broadway, grand marble stores had stood since the mid-19th century: Lord & Taylor and Tiffany & Company opened here.