English

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From our recording studio in Brooklyn, we make audio that celebrates human creativity, history and the spaces we live to learn about.

In the 1960s, SoHo was deserted. That's when my parents moved here.

I'm Yukie Ohta. My sister Mimi and I were born and raised in SoHo, and I still live here with my artist husband and our daughter. 

I want to show you my SoHo. We’ll trace signs of the past, and uncover hidden details only lifelong residents can show you.

PS - Bring a fridge magnet if you have one handy!

This walk was created in the summer of 2021.

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SoHo

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New York

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“It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.”
― E.B. White

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You should be standing diagonally across from a blue wall, with exposed beams. Do you see it across the street?  This is an iconic work of public art by Forrest Myers simply called The Wall and it marks the gateway to SoHo.

There’s art everywhere in this neighborhood, from carvings on the sidewalk, to the large-scale work you’re facing now.  If you know where to look, you can uncover SoHo’s history as an artists’ community. 

We’re going for a walk through what is now one of New York’s most popular shopping areas. Back in the mid-1800s, this neighborhood was also a shopping district, and a red light district. After that, it became a center for manufacturing, which is when all these cast iron buildings were built. Then, in the 1960s, the factories moved out and artists saw an opportunity to use these industrial spaces as studios. That’s when my parents moved here. 

I'm Yukie Ohta. My sister Mimi and I were born and raised in SoHo, and I still live here with my artist husband and our daughter.

I’ll show you how the neighborhood’s changed, and how it’s stayed the same. I’m also gonna show you a few hidden gems that connect old SoHo to the community of creatives that still call this neighborhood home. 

Let's start walking.


Turn left and start walking east on Houston.

250 East Houston Street \|||// You should be standing diagonally across from a blue wall, with exposed beams. Do you see it across the street?  This is an iconic work of public art by Forrest Myers simply called The Wall and it marks the gateway to SoHo.

There’s art everywhere in this neighborhood, from carvings on the sidewalk, to the large-scale work you’re facing now.  If you know where to look, you can uncover SoHo’s history as an artists’ community. 

We’re going for a walk through what is now one of New York’s most popular shopping areas. Back in the mid-1800s, this neighborhood was also a shopping district, and a red light district. After that, it became a center for manufacturing, which is when all these cast iron buildings were built. Then, in the 1960s, the factories moved out and artists saw an opportunity to use these industrial spaces as studios. That’s when my parents moved here. 

I'm Yukie Ohta. My sister Mimi and I were born and raised in SoHo, and I still live here with my artist husband and our daughter.

I’ll show you how the neighborhood’s changed, and how it’s stayed the same. I’m also gonna show you a few hidden gems that connect old SoHo to the community of creatives that still call this neighborhood home. 

Let's start walking.


Turn left and start walking east on Houston.

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The Gateway to SoHo

Tour Item

The Gateway to SoHo 8.17.mp3

I’m the founder of the SoHo Memory Project, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and preserves the history of this neighborhood. As SoHo’s memorykeeper, I look after traces of our neighborhood’s past, to keep them from disappearing forever.

My dad, a painter, carpenter, and high-school dropout, came to New York from Japan in 1965 via boat and greyhound bus. He came to see the World’s Fair, and then ended up staying for 50 years. 

Keep going straight on Houston for one more block.

There was little room for artists like my dad in a post-war Japan that was rebuilding its economy, but plenty of space for him to spread his wings in 1960s SoHo. My mom, who knew my dad from their hometown, followed two years later. 


By the way, we’re walking along the north end of SoHo. SoHo is short for South of Houston, which is the area to the right of you.

Up ahead, take a right on Lafayette Street. 

Anyway, it’s a good thing my parents came to the US with very few expectations, because SoHo in the 1960s was nothing like the SoHo of today. For starters, it was considered a dangerous neighborhood, especially at night. And on top of that, it was still quite industrial, with artists paying next to nothing for raw spaces without basic amenities such as heat and sometimes even electricity.

What's now called Soho was a manufacturing district. The zoning did not permit residential use in manufacturing buildings. So artists started to move in renting here and it was a very haphazard situation. 

That’s architect Shael Shapiro. He was an early SoHo pioneer and is the co-author of the book Illegal Living. The title of his book refers to the artists who paid rent under the table to live here in spaces that weren’t legal residences.

Keep walking until you see an alleyway on your right. 

1922 East Houston Street \|||// I’m the founder of the SoHo Memory Project, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and preserves the history of this neighborhood. As SoHo’s memorykeeper, I look after traces of our neighborhood’s past, to keep them from disappearing forever.

My dad, a painter, carpenter, and high-school dropout, came to New York from Japan in 1965 via boat and greyhound bus. He came to see the World’s Fair, and then ended up staying for 50 years. 

Keep going straight on Houston for one more block.

There was little room for artists like my dad in a post-war Japan that was rebuilding its economy, but plenty of space for him to spread his wings in 1960s SoHo. My mom, who knew my dad from their hometown, followed two years later. 


By the way, we’re walking along the north end of SoHo. SoHo is short for South of Houston, which is the area to the right of you.

Up ahead, take a right on Lafayette Street. 

Anyway, it’s a good thing my parents came to the US with very few expectations, because SoHo in the 1960s was nothing like the SoHo of today. For starters, it was considered a dangerous neighborhood, especially at night. And on top of that, it was still quite industrial, with artists paying next to nothing for raw spaces without basic amenities such as heat and sometimes even electricity.

What's now called Soho was a manufacturing district. The zoning did not permit residential use in manufacturing buildings. So artists started to move in renting here and it was a very haphazard situation. 

That’s architect Shael Shapiro. He was an early SoHo pioneer and is the co-author of the book Illegal Living. The title of his book refers to the artists who paid rent under the table to live here in spaces that weren’t legal residences.

Keep walking until you see an alleyway on your right. 

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Houston Street

Houston Street 8.17.mp3

Just ahead, there’s an alleyway on your right called Jersey Street. Pause when you get to it.

Of all the streets in SoHo, this short alleyway looks most like it used to, back in the day. 

Look down this alley and up at the building on your left. You’ll see metal fire shutters on the windows. Back in the 1940s and 50s, when many of these buildings were still warehouses and factories and mostly empty, this neighborhood was dubbed Hell’s Hundred Acres by the fire department. Shutters like these were designed to prevent fires from spreading.

Follow this alley to the next corner. 

When I was growing up, our shutters would slam open and shut during storms, waking me up in the middle of the night. All that racket  was a reminder to us that these buildings weren't designed to be lived in.

Just ahead is Housing Works, a volunteer-staffed, non-profit thrift store, bookstore, and cafe. All proceeds go to help unhoused people living with HIV and AIDS.

Make your way over to the bookstore. It’s to the left of the thrift store at 126 Crosby and may have some temporary construction barriers in front of it. 

I used to volunteer at Housing Works Bookstore, repairing rare books in the basement. That job inspired me to become an archivist, to preserve things from the past so that they last into the future.

292 Lafayette Street \|||// Just ahead, there’s an alleyway on your right called Jersey Street. Pause when you get to it.

Of all the streets in SoHo, this short alleyway looks most like it used to, back in the day. 

Look down this alley and up at the building on your left. You’ll see metal fire shutters on the windows. Back in the 1940s and 50s, when many of these buildings were still warehouses and factories and mostly empty, this neighborhood was dubbed Hell’s Hundred Acres by the fire department. Shutters like these were designed to prevent fires from spreading.

Follow this alley to the next corner. 

When I was growing up, our shutters would slam open and shut during storms, waking me up in the middle of the night. All that racket  was a reminder to us that these buildings weren't designed to be lived in.

Just ahead is Housing Works, a volunteer-staffed, non-profit thrift store, bookstore, and cafe. All proceeds go to help unhoused people living with HIV and AIDS.

Make your way over to the bookstore. It’s to the left of the thrift store at 126 Crosby and may have some temporary construction barriers in front of it. 

I used to volunteer at Housing Works Bookstore, repairing rare books in the basement. That job inspired me to become an archivist, to preserve things from the past so that they last into the future.

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Jersey Street Alley

Jersey Street Alley 8.18.mp3

I love this bookstore because to me it embodies the spirit of old SoHo. It’s run by and for the community, and it's also the only place I can think of where everyone in SoHo hangs out: bankers, artists, children, unhoused individuals, and even tourists. 

Step inside if it’s open, and if not, peer through the window. Look in the glass encased cabinets up front--- these are the kinds of rare books I used to repair when I worked here. As you can see, the interior of the store is magnificent, with its dark wood bookcases and spiral staircases up to a mezzanine. I often sit up there with friends and books on rainy afternoons. 

Take your time in Housing Works. When you’re ready to leave, turn right as you exit the bookstore to continue one more block down Crosby, toward Prince Street.

1 Jersey Street \|||// I love this bookstore because to me it embodies the spirit of old SoHo. It’s run by and for the community, and it's also the only place I can think of where everyone in SoHo hangs out: bankers, artists, children, unhoused individuals, and even tourists. 

Step inside if it’s open, and if not, peer through the window. Look in the glass encased cabinets up front--- these are the kinds of rare books I used to repair when I worked here. As you can see, the interior of the store is magnificent, with its dark wood bookcases and spiral staircases up to a mezzanine. I often sit up there with friends and books on rainy afternoons. 

Take your time in Housing Works. When you’re ready to leave, turn right as you exit the bookstore to continue one more block down Crosby, toward Prince Street.

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Housing Works Bookstore

Housing Works Bookstore 8.18.mp3

Aaron Shkuda is a historian who wrote the book called The Lofts of SoHo. He explains that back in the mid-1800s, SoHo’s department stores shared the neighborhood with an infamous red light district.

You have this odd moment where Soho is both a fashionable shopping and hotel district, but also the part of the city that's known as a commercial sex district. On the side streets of off-Broadway, you  have casinos, theaters, and brothels. And there were major hotels, including some of the most opulent and finest in the city, all around this area.


Side streets like this one were lined with one-family houses and paved with these Belgian blocks. They look really nice, but it sure hurts when you ride your bike down this street.

Look diagonally across this corner and find the sign that reads “Dig” in front of that red brick building at 70 Prince Street. Head over there and pause on the sidewalk for a moment. 

By the late-1800s, private homes, shops, hotels and brothels would be replaced by factories  and the cast iron buildings you see all around you today. But there are a few small houses still standing.


That red brick house was built in the 1820’s as a one-family residence. It later became a saloon where thieves and prostitutes hung out. By the time I was growing up in the 70s, this was a coffee shop called Crosby Lunch with a long counter and spinning stools. My mom used to take me here for grilled cheese sandwiches, which is still my favorite food to this day. 

Back then, Crosby Lunch was one of the few places to eat out around here, which sure isn’t the case today. It was open for breakfast and lunch only, and closed by 5 pm when all the factory workers got on the subway and headed home. There weren’t any restaurants that stayed open near here, because, supposedly, nobody lived here.

Do you see that cast iron column encased in glass? This is an early use of the building material that would soon come to identify the architecture of this neighborhood.

Cast-iron was a fire-resistant, economic alternative to granite and marble that builders used to construct factories and warehouses in the mid to late 1800s. Aaron Shkuda explains how cast-iron facades were manufactured.

The facades of loft buildings were cast in iron foundries and shipped piece by piece to a building site and assembled the facade of the building.

So in this way, cast-iron architecture was an early form of prefabrication. 

Continue walking in the same direction down Crosby Street and stop when you see an olive green door with the number 97.

120 Crosby Street \|||// Aaron Shkuda is a historian who wrote the book called The Lofts of SoHo. He explains that back in the mid-1800s, SoHo’s department stores shared the neighborhood with an infamous red light district.

You have this odd moment where Soho is both a fashionable shopping and hotel district, but also the part of the city that's known as a commercial sex district. On the side streets of off-Broadway, you  have casinos, theaters, and brothels. And there were major hotels, including some of the most opulent and finest in the city, all around this area.


Side streets like this one were lined with one-family houses and paved with these Belgian blocks. They look really nice, but it sure hurts when you ride your bike down this street.

Look diagonally across this corner and find the sign that reads “Dig” in front of that red brick building at 70 Prince Street. Head over there and pause on the sidewalk for a moment. 

By the late-1800s, private homes, shops, hotels and brothels would be replaced by factories  and the cast iron buildings you see all around you today. But there are a few small houses still standing.


That red brick house was built in the 1820’s as a one-family residence. It later became a saloon where thieves and prostitutes hung out. By the time I was growing up in the 70s, this was a coffee shop called Crosby Lunch with a long counter and spinning stools. My mom used to take me here for grilled cheese sandwiches, which is still my favorite food to this day. 

Back then, Crosby Lunch was one of the few places to eat out around here, which sure isn’t the case today. It was open for breakfast and lunch only, and closed by 5 pm when all the factory workers got on the subway and headed home. There weren’t any restaurants that stayed open near here, because, supposedly, nobody lived here.

Do you see that cast iron column encased in glass? This is an early use of the building material that would soon come to identify the architecture of this neighborhood.

Cast-iron was a fire-resistant, economic alternative to granite and marble that builders used to construct factories and warehouses in the mid to late 1800s. Aaron Shkuda explains how cast-iron facades were manufactured.

The facades of loft buildings were cast in iron foundries and shipped piece by piece to a building site and assembled the facade of the building.

So in this way, cast-iron architecture was an early form of prefabrication. 

Continue walking in the same direction down Crosby Street and stop when you see an olive green door with the number 97.

Crosby Lunch Jody Saslow.jpg

Crosby Lunch

Crosby Lunch 8.18.mp3

We’re coming up on the building where I lived until I was 5 years old, from 1969 to 1974. 


Pause when you get to the green door to your left at 97 Crosby. 


When I was just 3 months old, I waved to the Apollo astronauts as they passed by in a ticker tape parade down Lafayette Street, after they came back from the moon. Our loft took up the whole floor and had windows on all four sides. I can’t even imagine what that loft would go for today, but we paid 125 a month in cash to a landlord who was probably connected to the Mafia.

When I tell people I grew up in SoHo, they always say that it must have been so fun and glamorous. It was fun playing on the porch swing that hung from our ceiling and learning to ride a bike in my house, but it was also kind of like urban camping, and not really glamorous when I had to sleep in my winter coat because we had no heat. But it was also all I knew.  I had no idea that other children grew up in apartments with central heating and doorbells and carpeting.

If you take out your phone now, you’ll see a photo of me, my sister Mimi, and my mom in front of our loft. I was maybe 5 years old when my dad took this photo. 

If you step back a bit and look to the right of number 97 there is a one story building and then another tall building. My dad had a studio and woodshop in that building that was about level with our loft and my parents rigged a clothesline across the way from window to window. 

When it was lunchtime, my mom would call my dad on a toy phone that they also rigged across the way, the phone my grandmother sent ME from Japan for my birthday, to tell him his lunch box was on the way, via the clothesline. This was the DIY SoHo I grew up in, where people just Macguyvered anything they needed. 

Retrace your footsteps back along Crosby Street.

When I was a baby, we had a coal burning stove for heat. When my family ran out of coal, my dad would burn wooden crates discarded by the fruit vendor who used to throw them into the street from his horse-drawn cart! This block was so desolate, he probably thought no one would notice. 

At the corner, cross over to your left and then across Prince Street. Take a left on Prince Street and walk down one block to Broadway.

Here’s my sister Mimi, who shares many of these early memories.

Yeah, when we were growing up, it was dark. And the way I did it, I would take my keys and put them in my fingers between my fingers. So if I had to punch somebody, they would get the keys in their face.


Even later, into the 90s, SoHo was considered a dangerous neighborhood. I always carried my “mugger money” in my front pocket, five dollars to give to any would-be muggers so they wouldn’t get pissed off that you had no money. Funny thing is is that the couple of times I actually was robbed, it wasn’t in SoHo. And then what felt like only a few years later, I was suddenly not weird but cool for living in SoHo, and it was considered safe so friends asked to come over to my house to ride in my freight elevator.
 
Once you get to Broadway, cross over to the Northwest corner, where the subway stop is. Try to stand somewhere out of the way, but close to the corner of the sidewalk. Maybe between that 
lamp post and fire hydrant to the right of the curb.

254 Lafayette Street \|||// We’re coming up on the building where I lived until I was 5 years old, from 1969 to 1974. 


Pause when you get to the green door to your left at 97 Crosby. 


When I was just 3 months old, I waved to the Apollo astronauts as they passed by in a ticker tape parade down Lafayette Street, after they came back from the moon. Our loft took up the whole floor and had windows on all four sides. I can’t even imagine what that loft would go for today, but we paid 125 a month in cash to a landlord who was probably connected to the Mafia.

When I tell people I grew up in SoHo, they always say that it must have been so fun and glamorous. It was fun playing on the porch swing that hung from our ceiling and learning to ride a bike in my house, but it was also kind of like urban camping, and not really glamorous when I had to sleep in my winter coat because we had no heat. But it was also all I knew.  I had no idea that other children grew up in apartments with central heating and doorbells and carpeting.

If you take out your phone now, you’ll see a photo of me, my sister Mimi, and my mom in front of our loft. I was maybe 5 years old when my dad took this photo. 

If you step back a bit and look to the right of number 97 there is a one story building and then another tall building. My dad had a studio and woodshop in that building that was about level with our loft and my parents rigged a clothesline across the way from window to window. 

When it was lunchtime, my mom would call my dad on a toy phone that they also rigged across the way, the phone my grandmother sent ME from Japan for my birthday, to tell him his lunch box was on the way, via the clothesline. This was the DIY SoHo I grew up in, where people just Macguyvered anything they needed. 

Retrace your footsteps back along Crosby Street.

When I was a baby, we had a coal burning stove for heat. When my family ran out of coal, my dad would burn wooden crates discarded by the fruit vendor who used to throw them into the street from his horse-drawn cart! This block was so desolate, he probably thought no one would notice. 

At the corner, cross over to your left and then across Prince Street. Take a left on Prince Street and walk down one block to Broadway.

Here’s my sister Mimi, who shares many of these early memories.

Yeah, when we were growing up, it was dark. And the way I did it, I would take my keys and put them in my fingers between my fingers. So if I had to punch somebody, they would get the keys in their face.


Even later, into the 90s, SoHo was considered a dangerous neighborhood. I always carried my “mugger money” in my front pocket, five dollars to give to any would-be muggers so they wouldn’t get pissed off that you had no money. Funny thing is is that the couple of times I actually was robbed, it wasn’t in SoHo. And then what felt like only a few years later, I was suddenly not weird but cool for living in SoHo, and it was considered safe so friends asked to come over to my house to ride in my freight elevator.
 
Once you get to Broadway, cross over to the Northwest corner, where the subway stop is. Try to stand somewhere out of the way, but close to the corner of the sidewalk. Maybe between that 
lamp post and fire hydrant to the right of the curb.

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Yukie's Old Loft

Yukie's Old Loft 8.18.mp3

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Look down at the sidewalk on the corner once you’ve crossed Broadway. Pay special attention to the area of sidewalk that has carvings on it. 

This corner is extremely crowded, so find a free place to stand near the Prada store for a moment.

Back in 1984, when SoHo was still a gritty and desolate area, artist Ken Hiratsuka thought this lonely corner needed some life.


Inspired by the graffiti he saw around the city, he decided to chisel a design into the granite, creating the first work, in a series of what would become his signature style of stonework. Can you find where the line starts? How about where it ends? Here, Ken Hiratsuka himself describes this work.

It’s one continuous line. Our life is one line, we can never go back to the same past again. You cannot go to two places at once, therefore, my line carving I decide not to cross each other. Then eventually if you don’t cross each other, you can carve all the earth into one sculpture.

Afraid to be caught by the police and deported back to Japan, Hiratsuka made the piece bit by bit under the cover of night, always bringing a lookout. 

If you take out your phone now, you’ll see a photo of Ken carving the sidewalk during one of his many encounters with the police. 

I was stopped four times on Prince and Broadway. I was always carrying a chisel and hammer. I was a bad boy. If you are a graffiti artist, you are tempted. That's my spot. I have to tag it.

If you look closely at Ken’s piece, you’ll see he also carved his name and the year into it. 

By the way, back in the 90’s, years after Ken made his carving, the Prada store was the downtown location for the Guggenheim Museum!

Keep walking in the same direction on Prince street toward that red neon cafe sign off in the distance.

By the time Ken made his mark on this corner, artists had figured out a way to live in SoHo lofts without breaking the law. In the early 70s, artists demonstrated their value to the city and helped pass a series of policy changes that legalized live-work spaces for artists. Here’s Aaron Shkuda.


So in 1970, there was a second group of artists that formed the Soho artists association. This group of artists is able to kind of like slowly create a legal framework to allow them to live in converted lofts, but also kind of like creates a series of arguments that I think have a lot of staying power about why artists are important to the functioning of cities. Like everything from, without arts, there is no culture to, without arts, there are no new real estate developments. 

Make your way over to the red sign diagonally across that street that reads “Fanelli Cafe.” 

After loft living became legal for artists, painters, dancers, and musicians began moving here in greater numbers to create a tight-knit community. Many of them hung out at Fanelli’s, one of the few places open at night in SoHo.

 \|||// Look down at the sidewalk on the corner once you’ve crossed Broadway. Pay special attention to the area of sidewalk that has carvings on it. 

This corner is extremely crowded, so find a free place to stand near the Prada store for a moment.

Back in 1984, when SoHo was still a gritty and desolate area, artist Ken Hiratsuka thought this lonely corner needed some life.


Inspired by the graffiti he saw around the city, he decided to chisel a design into the granite, creating the first work, in a series of what would become his signature style of stonework. Can you find where the line starts? How about where it ends? Here, Ken Hiratsuka himself describes this work.

It’s one continuous line. Our life is one line, we can never go back to the same past again. You cannot go to two places at once, therefore, my line carving I decide not to cross each other. Then eventually if you don’t cross each other, you can carve all the earth into one sculpture.

Afraid to be caught by the police and deported back to Japan, Hiratsuka made the piece bit by bit under the cover of night, always bringing a lookout. 

If you take out your phone now, you’ll see a photo of Ken carving the sidewalk during one of his many encounters with the police. 

I was stopped four times on Prince and Broadway. I was always carrying a chisel and hammer. I was a bad boy. If you are a graffiti artist, you are tempted. That's my spot. I have to tag it.

If you look closely at Ken’s piece, you’ll see he also carved his name and the year into it. 

By the way, back in the 90’s, years after Ken made his carving, the Prada store was the downtown location for the Guggenheim Museum!

Keep walking in the same direction on Prince street toward that red neon cafe sign off in the distance.

By the time Ken made his mark on this corner, artists had figured out a way to live in SoHo lofts without breaking the law. In the early 70s, artists demonstrated their value to the city and helped pass a series of policy changes that legalized live-work spaces for artists. Here’s Aaron Shkuda.


So in 1970, there was a second group of artists that formed the Soho artists association. This group of artists is able to kind of like slowly create a legal framework to allow them to live in converted lofts, but also kind of like creates a series of arguments that I think have a lot of staying power about why artists are important to the functioning of cities. Like everything from, without arts, there is no culture to, without arts, there are no new real estate developments. 

Make your way over to the red sign diagonally across that street that reads “Fanelli Cafe.” 

After loft living became legal for artists, painters, dancers, and musicians began moving here in greater numbers to create a tight-knit community. Many of them hung out at Fanelli’s, one of the few places open at night in SoHo.

Ken Hiratsuka.jpg

Ken's Sidewalk Carving

Ken's Sidewalk Carving 8.18.mp3

Pause outside of Fanelli’s for a moment, at 94 Prince, and find a free place to stand near this crowded corner. 

Known by a variety of other names before 1922 when one-time boxer Mike Fanelli bought it and ran it for the next 60 years, Fanelli’s has been serving food and drink to the public since 1847, making it one of the oldest restaurants in the city.  

I remember pictures of boxers on the wall across from the bar that are still there if you venture inside for what my dad says is the best burger in New York City, and the framed liquor licenses dating back to the 1800s in the back room. The interior still looks exactly like it did when I was a kid, and probably like it did when it first opened.

Keep walking in the same direction along Prince Street to the corner.


In the mid 1800s, Fanelli’s catered to City Hall politicians, and there was a brothel upstairs. As the neighborhood changed, so did the clientele. Industry brought factory workers and then in the 1960’s and 70’s, when Mike Fanelli was still working behind the bar, Fanelli’s transitioned from being a blue collar joint to an artists’ hangout. Fanelli’s patrons are now a mix of locals, tourists, and office workers, but they all tread on the same old tile floor and sit at the same old bar of yesteryear.

Just before the corner, pause and look across Prince Street to your right at the entrance to the Apple store at 103 Prince.

94 Prince Street \|||// Pause outside of Fanelli’s for a moment, at 94 Prince, and find a free place to stand near this crowded corner. 

Known by a variety of other names before 1922 when one-time boxer Mike Fanelli bought it and ran it for the next 60 years, Fanelli’s has been serving food and drink to the public since 1847, making it one of the oldest restaurants in the city.  

I remember pictures of boxers on the wall across from the bar that are still there if you venture inside for what my dad says is the best burger in New York City, and the framed liquor licenses dating back to the 1800s in the back room. The interior still looks exactly like it did when I was a kid, and probably like it did when it first opened.

Keep walking in the same direction along Prince Street to the corner.


In the mid 1800s, Fanelli’s catered to City Hall politicians, and there was a brothel upstairs. As the neighborhood changed, so did the clientele. Industry brought factory workers and then in the 1960’s and 70’s, when Mike Fanelli was still working behind the bar, Fanelli’s transitioned from being a blue collar joint to an artists’ hangout. Fanelli’s patrons are now a mix of locals, tourists, and office workers, but they all tread on the same old tile floor and sit at the same old bar of yesteryear.

Just before the corner, pause and look across Prince Street to your right at the entrance to the Apple store at 103 Prince.

soho-fanellis.jpg

Fanelli's

Fanelli's 8.18.mp3

Above the front doors to the Apple store, just under the roof, it says “United States Post Office.” Until 2002, this was my local post office! 

Audrey, our postal carrier, delivered our mail for over 20 years. In the 90's I worked for a publishing house on the corner of Broadway and Prince.  Someone in Korea sent me a package to my office, but he sent it to the wrong street address. The package should have been sent back, but, luckily, Audrey spotted it and delivered it to my home that same day. Now how's that for small-town service? 

As SoHo developed into the bustling area it is now, that sense of living in a small town, where everyone knew each other and said hello on the street, has faded. US kids used to play outside on the desolate streets, but we felt safe because there were always familiar faces around. We didn’t have any traffic lights because there were no cars driving around, just your occasional freight truck. These traffic lights you see here were put in later, after I became an adult. 

Here’s artist Joyce Kozloff, who’s lived in SoHo since 1974, talking about the old days.

I always say that if I went out for a quart of milk in the morning,  and I ran into anyone, I would know them. Whereas now I walk out into the street and there are thousands of people, I feel like I'm going to be stampeded on a Saturday afternoon and I don't know anyone. So it really was a small community and we were all  familiar with each other.

Now walk to the corner. Look up at the wall across the street in front of you. You’ll see a very faded mural with windows painted on the side of the building.  Pause on this corner for a moment and try to stay out of the way of passersby.

This faded mural, painted in 1975 by artist Richard Haas, is made to look as if the building’s cast iron facade wraps around the side of the building. Over the years, the mural has worn away, but it's one of the few murals still around from that era. So many of SoHo’s other murals have been painted over with ads. Notice that the two windows on this side of the building still retain their fire shutters.

Richard Haas still remembers the neighborhood’s reaction when the painting crew started to put up his mural. 

As the painters started to paint, everyone would come out of Fanelli’s and say, “C’mon, c’mon!” And we would all stand there on the street looking at these guys painting, first, one row of windows, two rows of windows. Everyday it was more, more. I always say, I would never ever ever ever ever have been a public artist if something like that hadn’t been my first foray into it. It’s the mural that launched 10,000 imitations around the world, basically. 

Now, find the foot of the column at the very corner of the Louis Vuitton Store behind you. Do you see the stamp that reads “JL Jackson & Brothers”? Take a photo of this foundry stamp, because we’ll want to look at it later. Earlier, we talked about how cast iron was an early form of prefabrication. Cast iron facades were delivered as a “kit of parts” --- chosen from a catalog, made elsewhere, and brought on site to be assembled during construction. Because of that, every building that has a cast iron facade has the name of the foundry where it was made stamped on it somewhere, usually on a pillar. Now, take your magnet out of your pocket and place it on the column. Does it stick? It should because iron is magnetic. If you’re ever curious about whether or not a building is a cast iron original, you can use your magnet to find out. 

Facing the mural, take a left on Greene Street.

Walking around SoHo back in the 70s, you might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of artists like Richard Haas in action, but just as often you might encounter an artist embodying a work of art themselves. Joyce Kozloff remembers seeing performance art on display at street level. 

One of the things I flashed on this morning was mud man, an artist named Kim Jones who was a Vietnam vet. And he would stand in the street covered with mud and people maybe thought he was a crazy person. It was an art piece.

Mud man may be long gone, but other public art remains on streets like this one. 

Pause here for a moment in front of 110 Greene Street.  

Now look in the sidewalk up ahead, not on it but in it. You’ll see Belgian artist Francoise Schein’s “Subway Map Floating on a New York Sidewalk.” This work was commissioned by the building’s owner in 1985.

Also, did you notice the stone carving on your left? Does it look familiar? It was created by Ken Hiratsuka, the same artist that created the sidewalk carvings on Prince and Broadway, but he didn’t have to carve this one under the cover of night. 

And just past that sculpture is a work by Hans Van de Bovenkamp. We’ll see another one of his works shortly.

Keep walking in the same direction, following the lines of the subway map under your feet.

I’ve got one more thing to show you on this block. Keep an eye out for an interesting door on the left, with the number 102 on it.

You’re looking for a large rust-colored door, between two white columns. This door was designed by William Tarr, a former resident of this building. The hook is the door knocker, and the barred square opens from the inside, like a peephole.

Trace your footsteps back along Greene St.
In 1980, back when disco faded into new wave, when long hair went vertical to become big hair, Agnes b. opened just around the corner at 130 Prince. I remember thinking why would a clothing store open up in such a crappy neighborhood? It wasn’t as if artists could afford designer clothing. I thought it was interesting, and also a bit ridiculous. But then another store opened, I think it was Comme des Garcons, and then another, and another, and by 1990 there were clothing stores everywhere. Not the mainstream brands you see here today, but more edgy brands.
Once you get to the corner, cross Prince Street and take a left on the far side of Prince Street. Then, keep walking to the next corner.

When I was in high school, I saved up money from my job working at a toy store and bought a houndstooth button down at Agnes B. It was the first “real” item of clothing I ever bought for myself, and I still have it to this day.  For me, the shirt is object zero in SoHo’s transformation from artist enclave to retail hub, and I’ll cherish it forever.

Once Prince Street started attracting mega brands like Apple and Polo, Agnes b., forever the maverick, moved to Howard Street in 2011, back when that end of SoHo was still the wild west for retail. Though now it’s just as trendy as the rest of the neighborhood.

Glance to your left as you pass the low red brick building across the street. 

Do you see the two faded ads for a lithographer and an office supply place above the row of stores? And then the cat on the window ledge in between? 

The ads are likely from around the time the building was constructed, in the 1890s. The cat was added much later when artists moved here. The ads and the cat are from two different eras, but together they reflect the block’s history, the melding of art, industry, and commerce in one glance.

Cross Wooster Street and head to the front of the Marc Jacobs store at 127 Prince. 

At one time, diners like Crosby Lunch and bars like Fanelli’s were some of the only places you could go out to eat, until artists began opening up their own restaurants.

122 Greene Street \|||// Above the front doors to the Apple store, just under the roof, it says “United States Post Office.” Until 2002, this was my local post office! 

Audrey, our postal carrier, delivered our mail for over 20 years. In the 90's I worked for a publishing house on the corner of Broadway and Prince.  Someone in Korea sent me a package to my office, but he sent it to the wrong street address. The package should have been sent back, but, luckily, Audrey spotted it and delivered it to my home that same day. Now how's that for small-town service? 

As SoHo developed into the bustling area it is now, that sense of living in a small town, where everyone knew each other and said hello on the street, has faded. US kids used to play outside on the desolate streets, but we felt safe because there were always familiar faces around. We didn’t have any traffic lights because there were no cars driving around, just your occasional freight truck. These traffic lights you see here were put in later, after I became an adult. 

Here’s artist Joyce Kozloff, who’s lived in SoHo since 1974, talking about the old days.

I always say that if I went out for a quart of milk in the morning,  and I ran into anyone, I would know them. Whereas now I walk out into the street and there are thousands of people, I feel like I'm going to be stampeded on a Saturday afternoon and I don't know anyone. So it really was a small community and we were all  familiar with each other.

Now walk to the corner. Look up at the wall across the street in front of you. You’ll see a very faded mural with windows painted on the side of the building.  Pause on this corner for a moment and try to stay out of the way of passersby.

This faded mural, painted in 1975 by artist Richard Haas, is made to look as if the building’s cast iron facade wraps around the side of the building. Over the years, the mural has worn away, but it's one of the few murals still around from that era. So many of SoHo’s other murals have been painted over with ads. Notice that the two windows on this side of the building still retain their fire shutters.

Richard Haas still remembers the neighborhood’s reaction when the painting crew started to put up his mural. 

As the painters started to paint, everyone would come out of Fanelli’s and say, “C’mon, c’mon!” And we would all stand there on the street looking at these guys painting, first, one row of windows, two rows of windows. Everyday it was more, more. I always say, I would never ever ever ever ever have been a public artist if something like that hadn’t been my first foray into it. It’s the mural that launched 10,000 imitations around the world, basically. 

Now, find the foot of the column at the very corner of the Louis Vuitton Store behind you. Do you see the stamp that reads “JL Jackson & Brothers”? Take a photo of this foundry stamp, because we’ll want to look at it later. Earlier, we talked about how cast iron was an early form of prefabrication. Cast iron facades were delivered as a “kit of parts” --- chosen from a catalog, made elsewhere, and brought on site to be assembled during construction. Because of that, every building that has a cast iron facade has the name of the foundry where it was made stamped on it somewhere, usually on a pillar. Now, take your magnet out of your pocket and place it on the column. Does it stick? It should because iron is magnetic. If you’re ever curious about whether or not a building is a cast iron original, you can use your magnet to find out. 

Facing the mural, take a left on Greene Street.

Walking around SoHo back in the 70s, you might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of artists like Richard Haas in action, but just as often you might encounter an artist embodying a work of art themselves. Joyce Kozloff remembers seeing performance art on display at street level. 

One of the things I flashed on this morning was mud man, an artist named Kim Jones who was a Vietnam vet. And he would stand in the street covered with mud and people maybe thought he was a crazy person. It was an art piece.

Mud man may be long gone, but other public art remains on streets like this one. 

Pause here for a moment in front of 110 Greene Street.  

Now look in the sidewalk up ahead, not on it but in it. You’ll see Belgian artist Francoise Schein’s “Subway Map Floating on a New York Sidewalk.” This work was commissioned by the building’s owner in 1985.

Also, did you notice the stone carving on your left? Does it look familiar? It was created by Ken Hiratsuka, the same artist that created the sidewalk carvings on Prince and Broadway, but he didn’t have to carve this one under the cover of night. 

And just past that sculpture is a work by Hans Van de Bovenkamp. We’ll see another one of his works shortly.

Keep walking in the same direction, following the lines of the subway map under your feet.

I’ve got one more thing to show you on this block. Keep an eye out for an interesting door on the left, with the number 102 on it.

You’re looking for a large rust-colored door, between two white columns. This door was designed by William Tarr, a former resident of this building. The hook is the door knocker, and the barred square opens from the inside, like a peephole.

Trace your footsteps back along Greene St.
In 1980, back when disco faded into new wave, when long hair went vertical to become big hair, Agnes b. opened just around the corner at 130 Prince. I remember thinking why would a clothing store open up in such a crappy neighborhood? It wasn’t as if artists could afford designer clothing. I thought it was interesting, and also a bit ridiculous. But then another store opened, I think it was Comme des Garcons, and then another, and another, and by 1990 there were clothing stores everywhere. Not the mainstream brands you see here today, but more edgy brands.
Once you get to the corner, cross Prince Street and take a left on the far side of Prince Street. Then, keep walking to the next corner.

When I was in high school, I saved up money from my job working at a toy store and bought a houndstooth button down at Agnes B. It was the first “real” item of clothing I ever bought for myself, and I still have it to this day.  For me, the shirt is object zero in SoHo’s transformation from artist enclave to retail hub, and I’ll cherish it forever.

Once Prince Street started attracting mega brands like Apple and Polo, Agnes b., forever the maverick, moved to Howard Street in 2011, back when that end of SoHo was still the wild west for retail. Though now it’s just as trendy as the rest of the neighborhood.

Glance to your left as you pass the low red brick building across the street. 

Do you see the two faded ads for a lithographer and an office supply place above the row of stores? And then the cat on the window ledge in between? 

The ads are likely from around the time the building was constructed, in the 1890s. The cat was added much later when artists moved here. The ads and the cat are from two different eras, but together they reflect the block’s history, the melding of art, industry, and commerce in one glance.

Cross Wooster Street and head to the front of the Marc Jacobs store at 127 Prince. 

At one time, diners like Crosby Lunch and bars like Fanelli’s were some of the only places you could go out to eat, until artists began opening up their own restaurants.

Apple Store Prince Station ca. 1940 Municipal Archives.jpg

Post Office 

Post Office 8.18.mp3

Pause in front of Marc Jacobs.

The restaurant FOOD opened in 1971, here at the corner of Wooster, where Marc Jacobs is today. It was a place that employed SoHo artists and served inexpensive but hearty food to SoHo artists that was cooked by SoHo artists.  


FOOD was way ahead of its time in that it served fresh, seasonal foods cooked using local ingredients in an open kitchen. They had rotating chefs of the week and it was a hub for the entire SoHo community. 

I have another connection to this building. Do you see that staircase that goes down under the Marc Jacobs store, on the Prince Street side? That’s where I went to preschool. 

My old preschool friends Paola and Zoe remember just how fun and kooky our playgroup was:


Yeah, a really dirty rat infested basement. I think they cleaned it out and made it semi fit for kids. Yeah. Do you remember there was a stack of mattresses there that everybody could jump on? And do you remember, it was a long tunnel to get to the back area where we were? Which was clean enough for children. 

On the next building over on Prince Street, to the left of the red painted bricks, there’s a plaque that honors the Father of SoHo, Chester Rapkin. The plaque is small and no one really seems to notice it, but without Rapkin, we wouldn’t have SoHo.

In the 1960’s, city planning commissioner Robert Moses wanted to build a highway through SoHo to connect the Hudson and East Rivers, and it looked like it might really happen. Around the same time, a group called the City Club put out a study called “The Wastelands of New York City” that  recommended a large part of what is now SoHo be cleared for development. According to them, there were “no buildings worth saving” here. Aaron Shkuda explains what happened next. 


The threat of the lower Manhattan expressway depressed property values, it made building owners less likely to renovate their properties. So that created an environment where the rents were low enough for artists eventually to be able to afford. 


Then, In 1963, Chester Rapkin came out with a report titled “The South Houston Industrial Area” (also known as the “Rapkin Report”). Rapkin found that SoHo was still an important industrial incubator and provided essential jobs to lower income workers and workers of color.

Due to this report, the buildings of South Houston, later shortened to SoHo, remained intact. This is why Chester Rapkin is called “The Father of SoHo.”

Keep walking in the same direction on Prince Street. 

As we walk toward West Broadway, have a look at another Hans Van de Bovenkamp sculpture to your right in front of the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, one of the last remaining art galleries from the old days in SoHo. 

Then, look at the tiny circles of glass embedded in the platform underneath. These are called vault lights.

Up ahead, cross West Broadway and then cross to your left to the other side of Prince Street. Then keep walking in the same direction.

Vault lights diffuse sunlight into the vault below the sidewalk, which is hollow. Before electricity, these tiny skylights lit otherwise dark basements, where factory workers manufactured goods that were sold in the street-level commercial spaces above.

After the Rapkin Report saved SoHo from the wrecking ball, artists fought to have SoHo protected as a historic district, and won. So now, the cast iron buildings of SoHo can never be demolished. And they can’t be altered without permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Thanks to SoHo artists, we can all enjoy the beautiful streetscapes of SoHo forever.

Continue along the south side of Prince Street.

129 Prince Street \|||// Pause in front of Marc Jacobs.

The restaurant FOOD opened in 1971, here at the corner of Wooster, where Marc Jacobs is today. It was a place that employed SoHo artists and served inexpensive but hearty food to SoHo artists that was cooked by SoHo artists.  


FOOD was way ahead of its time in that it served fresh, seasonal foods cooked using local ingredients in an open kitchen. They had rotating chefs of the week and it was a hub for the entire SoHo community. 

I have another connection to this building. Do you see that staircase that goes down under the Marc Jacobs store, on the Prince Street side? That’s where I went to preschool. 

My old preschool friends Paola and Zoe remember just how fun and kooky our playgroup was:


Yeah, a really dirty rat infested basement. I think they cleaned it out and made it semi fit for kids. Yeah. Do you remember there was a stack of mattresses there that everybody could jump on? And do you remember, it was a long tunnel to get to the back area where we were? Which was clean enough for children. 

On the next building over on Prince Street, to the left of the red painted bricks, there’s a plaque that honors the Father of SoHo, Chester Rapkin. The plaque is small and no one really seems to notice it, but without Rapkin, we wouldn’t have SoHo.

In the 1960’s, city planning commissioner Robert Moses wanted to build a highway through SoHo to connect the Hudson and East Rivers, and it looked like it might really happen. Around the same time, a group called the City Club put out a study called “The Wastelands of New York City” that  recommended a large part of what is now SoHo be cleared for development. According to them, there were “no buildings worth saving” here. Aaron Shkuda explains what happened next. 


The threat of the lower Manhattan expressway depressed property values, it made building owners less likely to renovate their properties. So that created an environment where the rents were low enough for artists eventually to be able to afford. 


Then, In 1963, Chester Rapkin came out with a report titled “The South Houston Industrial Area” (also known as the “Rapkin Report”). Rapkin found that SoHo was still an important industrial incubator and provided essential jobs to lower income workers and workers of color.

Due to this report, the buildings of South Houston, later shortened to SoHo, remained intact. This is why Chester Rapkin is called “The Father of SoHo.”

Keep walking in the same direction on Prince Street. 

As we walk toward West Broadway, have a look at another Hans Van de Bovenkamp sculpture to your right in front of the Louis K. Meisel Gallery, one of the last remaining art galleries from the old days in SoHo. 

Then, look at the tiny circles of glass embedded in the platform underneath. These are called vault lights.

Up ahead, cross West Broadway and then cross to your left to the other side of Prince Street. Then keep walking in the same direction.

Vault lights diffuse sunlight into the vault below the sidewalk, which is hollow. Before electricity, these tiny skylights lit otherwise dark basements, where factory workers manufactured goods that were sold in the street-level commercial spaces above.

After the Rapkin Report saved SoHo from the wrecking ball, artists fought to have SoHo protected as a historic district, and won. So now, the cast iron buildings of SoHo can never be demolished. And they can’t be altered without permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Thanks to SoHo artists, we can all enjoy the beautiful streetscapes of SoHo forever.

Continue along the south side of Prince Street.

soho-FOOD.jpg

FOOD Restaurant

FOOD Restaurant 8.17.mp3

Just ahead, there’s a green awning at 160 Prince. That’s Vesuvio Bakery. Pause when you get there.

This is one of the most photographed storefronts in all of New York City. From the outside, Vesuvio Bakery looks exactly like it did when I was growing up. It was an old-fashioned bread-only bakery. The bread was baked fresh each day and on sale until they ran out. 

Step inside for a drink or a pignoli cookie if they’re open. That dough divider in the window was probably used when this bakery first opened in 1920.

My family got our bread here for as long as I can remember, and Tony Dapolito, the owner, was always behind the counter, usually with a smile, but sometimes looking quite preoccupied. It was only after I became an adult that I found out Dapolito was the unofficial “mayor of Greenwich Village,” serving on the community board for over 50 years, working tirelessly to improve the lives of the Italian- and Portuguese-American families to the west of his bakery, as well as the artists to the east. 

Charles Leslie is an art curator and gay rights activist who founded the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. He remembers Tony as a conduit between the artist and immigrant communities. 


We'd finally gained an ally in a man named Tony Dapolito, whose family was kind of embedded in South Village, which was originally an old Italian neighborhood. And he was certainly educated enough and smart enough to understand that this was not all a bad thing that was happening. And so he became a kind of bridge, kind of liaison between us and the Italian community there.

Now, backtrack to West Broadway, where you’ll turn right. 


The current iteration of Vesuvio Bakery has no connection to Tony Dapolito’s bakery, which closed after Dapolito died in 2003. The new owner kept the green facade and the painted window signage in honor of the bakery’s 100 year history. 


When you turn right on West Broadway, notice the mix of architectural styles along this street: cast iron facades give way to brick apartment buildings.

This is because West Broadway is the border between SoHo’s historic district, to your left, and the South Village historic district, to your right. 

156 Prince Street \|||// Just ahead, there’s a green awning at 160 Prince. That’s Vesuvio Bakery. Pause when you get there.

This is one of the most photographed storefronts in all of New York City. From the outside, Vesuvio Bakery looks exactly like it did when I was growing up. It was an old-fashioned bread-only bakery. The bread was baked fresh each day and on sale until they ran out. 

Step inside for a drink or a pignoli cookie if they’re open. That dough divider in the window was probably used when this bakery first opened in 1920.

My family got our bread here for as long as I can remember, and Tony Dapolito, the owner, was always behind the counter, usually with a smile, but sometimes looking quite preoccupied. It was only after I became an adult that I found out Dapolito was the unofficial “mayor of Greenwich Village,” serving on the community board for over 50 years, working tirelessly to improve the lives of the Italian- and Portuguese-American families to the west of his bakery, as well as the artists to the east. 

Charles Leslie is an art curator and gay rights activist who founded the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. He remembers Tony as a conduit between the artist and immigrant communities. 


We'd finally gained an ally in a man named Tony Dapolito, whose family was kind of embedded in South Village, which was originally an old Italian neighborhood. And he was certainly educated enough and smart enough to understand that this was not all a bad thing that was happening. And so he became a kind of bridge, kind of liaison between us and the Italian community there.

Now, backtrack to West Broadway, where you’ll turn right. 


The current iteration of Vesuvio Bakery has no connection to Tony Dapolito’s bakery, which closed after Dapolito died in 2003. The new owner kept the green facade and the painted window signage in honor of the bakery’s 100 year history. 


When you turn right on West Broadway, notice the mix of architectural styles along this street: cast iron facades give way to brick apartment buildings.

This is because West Broadway is the border between SoHo’s historic district, to your left, and the South Village historic district, to your right.

IMG_4438.JPG

Vesuvio Bakery

Vesuvio Bakery 8.18.mp3

Pause when you get to the far end of the Citi bike rack. To your right, there will be a grey awning with the number 420.

In 1968 Paula Cooper opened the first art gallery on Prince Street in SoHo. Everyone thought she was crazy, but soon after, SoHo, and especially West Broadway, became the art hub of New York as galleries began popping up all over the neighborhood. 

The building at 420 West Broadway, called the Gallery Building, or simply “420,” was considered the epicenter of the downtown art scene. Some of the now-famous artists who showed their work in this building include Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Find the grey awning at 420 West Broadway on your right and stop for a moment when you get there.
 
As Aaron Shkuda describes here, the migration of galleries from 57th Street to SoHo completely transformed the contemporary art scene in New York and beyond.

Cooper, along with other SoHo gallerists came to SoHo to be around artists and to rent some of the same kind of expansive and inexpensive loft space that artists took advantage of galleries opened in Soho to be closer to the area's art scene, not to be close to their customers. So for the first time you had a large portion of the artist and gallery community occupying the same neighborhood.

Keep walking down West Broadway to the next corner.  

As you’re walking, look across the street and up to the top of the roof. You’ll see a water tower. And there’s another water tower coming up near the next corner, on the roof of the building diagonally across the street from you. Water towers are a common sight in New York, especially in SoHo. Wherever you are, if you look up, chances are you’ll see at least one, if not a small forest of them dotting the skyline.  

At the corner, cross Spring and then cross to the left side of West Broadway and keep going in the same direction on West Broadway, in the direction of One World Trade tower off in the distance.

Though they may look like remnants from New York’s past, 99% of the water towers in SoHo are still in use and they are rebuilt every 20 years when the cedar barrels begin to wear away. I see them as rooftop sentries, watching over the city, and that’s why I chose a water tower as the SoHo Memory Project logo.

I remember around 1980 or so, as I was getting off the subway, I began to see white chalk drawings of a glowing baby on subway station walls. No words, just a single image. I found out later that Keith Haring was the young artist behind the glowing baby. The MTA hadn’t been able to rent the ad space, so the empty black rectangles, which resembled blackboards, were the perfect canvas for Haring. 

Stop in front of the dark grey building coming up on your left, at 393 West Broadway.

An unknown graffiti artist back then, today, each of his drawings is worth upwards of a million dollars. 

Though many artists themselves were unknown at the time, you could identify artist residences by sight.  I’ll show you how. 

434 West Broadway \|||// Pause when you get to the far end of the Citi bike rack. To your right, there will be a grey awning with the number 420.

In 1968 Paula Cooper opened the first art gallery on Prince Street in SoHo. Everyone thought she was crazy, but soon after, SoHo, and especially West Broadway, became the art hub of New York as galleries began popping up all over the neighborhood. 

The building at 420 West Broadway, called the Gallery Building, or simply “420,” was considered the epicenter of the downtown art scene. Some of the now-famous artists who showed their work in this building include Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Find the grey awning at 420 West Broadway on your right and stop for a moment when you get there.
 
As Aaron Shkuda describes here, the migration of galleries from 57th Street to SoHo completely transformed the contemporary art scene in New York and beyond.

Cooper, along with other SoHo gallerists came to SoHo to be around artists and to rent some of the same kind of expansive and inexpensive loft space that artists took advantage of galleries opened in Soho to be closer to the area's art scene, not to be close to their customers. So for the first time you had a large portion of the artist and gallery community occupying the same neighborhood.

Keep walking down West Broadway to the next corner.  

As you’re walking, look across the street and up to the top of the roof. You’ll see a water tower. And there’s another water tower coming up near the next corner, on the roof of the building diagonally across the street from you. Water towers are a common sight in New York, especially in SoHo. Wherever you are, if you look up, chances are you’ll see at least one, if not a small forest of them dotting the skyline.  

At the corner, cross Spring and then cross to the left side of West Broadway and keep going in the same direction on West Broadway, in the direction of One World Trade tower off in the distance.

Though they may look like remnants from New York’s past, 99% of the water towers in SoHo are still in use and they are rebuilt every 20 years when the cedar barrels begin to wear away. I see them as rooftop sentries, watching over the city, and that’s why I chose a water tower as the SoHo Memory Project logo.

I remember around 1980 or so, as I was getting off the subway, I began to see white chalk drawings of a glowing baby on subway station walls. No words, just a single image. I found out later that Keith Haring was the young artist behind the glowing baby. The MTA hadn’t been able to rent the ad space, so the empty black rectangles, which resembled blackboards, were the perfect canvas for Haring. 

Stop in front of the dark grey building coming up on your left, at 393 West Broadway.

An unknown graffiti artist back then, today, each of his drawings is worth upwards of a million dollars. 

Though many artists themselves were unknown at the time, you could identify artist residences by sight.  I’ll show you how. 

soho-420.jpg

The 420 Gallery Building

The 420 Gallery Building 8.18.mp3

Look just above the doors at the sign that reads “AIR.” Any building inhabited by an artist used to have signs like this, usually with a floor number next to it. AIR stands for Artist in Residence. In the 1960s, before loft living was legalized, city officials knew that artists were living in commercial buildings. The city mandated that if there was an artist living in a building, they had to indicate that with an AIR sign and a floor number. That way, if there was a fire in the building during off hours, the fire department would know that someone was living in an otherwise commercial building, and they would go to their floor first, to bring the resident to safety.

But Aaron Shkuda points out that the AIR designation became more symbolic than anything else. 

It was important because it recognized artists in some way, but like, it really was informal and never really worked in practice.

There’s no need for AIR signs anymore, and this is the only one I know of that still exists in the neighborhood. Let me know if you happen to come across any more of them in your travels through SoHo.

Continue to the next door down by the black steps and then pause for a moment.

The Broken Kilometer by Walter De Maria, is in a large one-room gallery space that has continuously shown the same exhibition for over 40 years. 500 solid brass rods are arranged on the floor in 5 rows of 100 rods each. Have a look inside if it's open. Admission is free but hours are very limited. 

There are still a few art spaces like this left in SoHo, though they are mostly non-profit organizations that exhibit art rather than galleries that sell artwork, like this one, where you can still see traces of the experimental creativity that was born out of artists’ SoHo. I once came here on a class trip to see this exhibition, along with another De Maria work on Wooster Street called The Earth Room, which is a big room filled with soil almost two feet deep. I remember thinking that my neighborhood must be special if we were taking a field trip here, but I was still too young to understand why it was special. 

Keep walking down West Broadway until you reach number 383 on your left. When you get there, stand under the woman’s face. 

This cast iron detail, a bust of a woman wearing a crown with curlicues or maybe snakes branching out from her head, is one of my favorite building ornaments in SoHo. You’d think something as elaborate as this would go above the front door. It’s quite a grand gesture, then, to put such an ornate design over the entrance to the freight elevator. The way you know that there’s an elevator here is the sign on the window above that reads “shaftway.”

The bust above the door used to be stored in the basement of the OK Harris Gallery which was one of the first and most influential SoHo galleries and one of the last to close, in 2014.

The exact origin of the bust is unknown. It could have come from virtually any condemned building in the late 1960s. The owner of the gallery installed the bust above this door, making it look like it was always there. 

Walk down West Broadway to Broome and turn left at the corner.

I realize I’m showing you a lot of places that used to be this or that, and you might be thinking to yourself, so what? If these places aren’t here anymore, all you’re showing me is a bunch of stores. 


This is true, but I think that no matter why people walk through the streets of SoHo, because they live or work here, because they’ve come to shop or see the historic architecture, or because they're just passing through, their experience is enriched if they can see the layers of history draped over each place. Knowing what came before, in any neighborhood, but maybe especially in SoHo because it has such a rich and unusual history, can make you see the neighborhood in a new and more colorful light and can make a shopping trip a way to travel back in time. 

Turn left and walk east down Broome toward Wooster. 

Across to your right is the Broome Street Bar, another neighborhood gathering place. It’s in one of the oldest buildings in SoHo, built in 1825.
  
The corner we just passed used to be one of my favorite places to loiter because of its smell. The aroma of pepper would tickle my nose as I walked by because there was a spice factory here. Come to think of it, because SoHo was a neighborhood of factories, different blocks had different smells.


At the corner, turn left on Wooster and keep walking down the block.

It smelled like vanilla cake over on Prince Street where we just were because there was a commercial bakery there, and on Spring it smelled like leather from all the leather wholesalers, and here it smelled spicy. Those smells are all long gone.

Just ahead at 63 Wooster, in front of the Gucci store, is a black loading dock with a wheelchair lift on one end. Step up to the top of the loading dock when you get there.

393 West Broadway \|||// Look just above the doors at the sign that reads “AIR.” Any building inhabited by an artist used to have signs like this, usually with a floor number next to it. AIR stands for Artist in Residence. In the 1960s, before loft living was legalized, city officials knew that artists were living in commercial buildings. The city mandated that if there was an artist living in a building, they had to indicate that with an AIR sign and a floor number. That way, if there was a fire in the building during off hours, the fire department would know that someone was living in an otherwise commercial building, and they would go to their floor first, to bring the resident to safety.

But Aaron Shkuda points out that the AIR designation became more symbolic than anything else. 

It was important because it recognized artists in some way, but like, it really was informal and never really worked in practice.

There’s no need for AIR signs anymore, and this is the only one I know of that still exists in the neighborhood. Let me know if you happen to come across any more of them in your travels through SoHo.

Continue to the next door down by the black steps and then pause for a moment.

The Broken Kilometer by Walter De Maria, is in a large one-room gallery space that has continuously shown the same exhibition for over 40 years. 500 solid brass rods are arranged on the floor in 5 rows of 100 rods each. Have a look inside if it's open. Admission is free but hours are very limited. 

There are still a few art spaces like this left in SoHo, though they are mostly non-profit organizations that exhibit art rather than galleries that sell artwork, like this one, where you can still see traces of the experimental creativity that was born out of artists’ SoHo. I once came here on a class trip to see this exhibition, along with another De Maria work on Wooster Street called The Earth Room, which is a big room filled with soil almost two feet deep. I remember thinking that my neighborhood must be special if we were taking a field trip here, but I was still too young to understand why it was special. 

Keep walking down West Broadway until you reach number 383 on your left. When you get there, stand under the woman’s face. 

This cast iron detail, a bust of a woman wearing a crown with curlicues or maybe snakes branching out from her head, is one of my favorite building ornaments in SoHo. You’d think something as elaborate as this would go above the front door. It’s quite a grand gesture, then, to put such an ornate design over the entrance to the freight elevator. The way you know that there’s an elevator here is the sign on the window above that reads “shaftway.”

The bust above the door used to be stored in the basement of the OK Harris Gallery which was one of the first and most influential SoHo galleries and one of the last to close, in 2014.

The exact origin of the bust is unknown. It could have come from virtually any condemned building in the late 1960s. The owner of the gallery installed the bust above this door, making it look like it was always there. 

Walk down West Broadway to Broome and turn left at the corner.

I realize I’m showing you a lot of places that used to be this or that, and you might be thinking to yourself, so what? If these places aren’t here anymore, all you’re showing me is a bunch of stores. 


This is true, but I think that no matter why people walk through the streets of SoHo, because they live or work here, because they’ve come to shop or see the historic architecture, or because they're just passing through, their experience is enriched if they can see the layers of history draped over each place. Knowing what came before, in any neighborhood, but maybe especially in SoHo because it has such a rich and unusual history, can make you see the neighborhood in a new and more colorful light and can make a shopping trip a way to travel back in time. 

Turn left and walk east down Broome toward Wooster. 

Across to your right is the Broome Street Bar, another neighborhood gathering place. It’s in one of the oldest buildings in SoHo, built in 1825.
  
The corner we just passed used to be one of my favorite places to loiter because of its smell. The aroma of pepper would tickle my nose as I walked by because there was a spice factory here. Come to think of it, because SoHo was a neighborhood of factories, different blocks had different smells.


At the corner, turn left on Wooster and keep walking down the block.

It smelled like vanilla cake over on Prince Street where we just were because there was a commercial bakery there, and on Spring it smelled like leather from all the leather wholesalers, and here it smelled spicy. Those smells are all long gone.

Just ahead at 63 Wooster, in front of the Gucci store, is a black loading dock with a wheelchair lift on one end. Step up to the top of the loading dock when you get there.

AIR Sign.jpg

Artist-in-Residence Sign

Artist-in-Residence Sign 3.2.mp3

Stand on the elevated platform here, and imagine this street lined with long trucks, parked perpendicular to the buildings, loading and unloading stuff all day long. This is what it was like every weekday on every SoHo sidestreet, when I was growing up. Walking down just one block was an adventure! My sister and I would play lava, where we’d pretend the street and sidewalk were covered with lava, and we’d try to get as far as possible by jumping from loading dock to loading dock. Mimi describes how we did this: 

You could get off the platform, scoot yourself around the ledges and then around the cast iron columns, which had no lip, but you kind of scoot yourself around, then get to the other ledge and then get on the next platform.

We also used to duck, and run under the trucks. There were so many trucks blocking the streets that that was pretty much the only way to get home. While some kids had forests to explore and trees to climb, we had loading docks, trucks, and our own imaginations to fill in the rest.

Continue down Wooster and then pause once you’re across the street from 80 Wooster, which is the building with the dark green trim. 

My old friends Paola and Zoe also remember the fun we used to have in the streets:

I remember running around in the streets at night. Or being barefoot. I remember being yelled at, for not wearing shoes in the street by other random adults. And then, uh, the shaving cream fights. I do remember that. We would have a garbage bags. Yeah.

Growing up in SoHo was a singular childhood experience. We didn’t have backyards or fancy toys, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Pause across from the building with the green trim.

61 Wooster Street \|||// Stand on the elevated platform here, and imagine this street lined with long trucks, parked perpendicular to the buildings, loading and unloading stuff all day long. This is what it was like every weekday on every SoHo sidestreet, when I was growing up. Walking down just one block was an adventure! My sister and I would play lava, where we’d pretend the street and sidewalk were covered with lava, and we’d try to get as far as possible by jumping from loading dock to loading dock. Mimi describes how we did this: 

You could get off the platform, scoot yourself around the ledges and then around the cast iron columns, which had no lip, but you kind of scoot yourself around, then get to the other ledge and then get on the next platform.

We also used to duck, and run under the trucks. There were so many trucks blocking the streets that that was pretty much the only way to get home. While some kids had forests to explore and trees to climb, we had loading docks, trucks, and our own imaginations to fill in the rest.

Continue down Wooster and then pause once you’re across the street from 80 Wooster, which is the building with the dark green trim. 

My old friends Paola and Zoe also remember the fun we used to have in the streets:

I remember running around in the streets at night. Or being barefoot. I remember being yelled at, for not wearing shoes in the street by other random adults. And then, uh, the shaving cream fights. I do remember that. We would have a garbage bags. Yeah.

Growing up in SoHo was a singular childhood experience. We didn’t have backyards or fancy toys, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Pause across from the building with the green trim.

Loading dock.jpg

Loading Dock

Loading Dock 8.19.mp3

Look across the street. Do you see the building with the dark green trim? I had a weekly play date on the second floor of this building until I was about 5. Like 420 West Broadway, 80 Wooster was another epicenter of artists’ SoHo, and it was also known just by its street address. This building was the very first SoHo artists’ cooperative and also where George Maciunas founded the Fluxus art movement, which included artists like Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono. 

80 Wooster was also the home of Cinematheque, an experimental film and performance space founded by filmmaker Jonas Mekas, where Philip Glass and Richard Forman, among others, debuted early work.

Continue walking to the next corner. 

Once artists began living and working in lofts that they owned as part of a cooperative, because they no longer rented their lofts, they were less likely to be priced out by market forces, though many continued to rent. In fact, most of the artists who live in SoHo today, and there are still many of them around, own their lofts. They live here quietly above the clothing stores, making art in the live-work spaces they made home fifty years ago.

Cross Spring Street and then turn right to walk east on Spring.

The 1970s and 80s were the heyday for art and art galleries in SoHo. This period perfectly coincided with my childhood and teenage years.  By the 1990s, after I graduated from college, SoHo had transformed significantly from the neighborhood of my youth. Artists began leaving SoHo for Brooklyn and Queens as early as the mid-1970s due to rising rents, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that galleries were priced out and forced to move northward to West Chelsea, being replaced by the fashion brands that redefined SoHo as a retail destination. 

In the early 2000s, SoHo’s retail scene ramped up when luxury brands such as Prada and Chanel opened up shop here. As I saw these stores that I could never afford shopping in open one after the other and the sale prices of lofts skyrocket, I asked myself, how much higher could prices go? I thought they must have plateaued, but then Tiffany’s and Gucci opened in the 2010s and upped the retail game even more. 


When you reach the corner, cross Greene and continue down Spring.

Why did every sought-after brand open here and not somewhere else? It’s because of SoHo’s history as an artist enclave where creativity and expression bloomed out of the ashes of New York’s industrial past. SoHo’s almost mythical image looms large in the public imagination. SoHo artists and the cast iron buildings they live and work in came to symbolize not just creativity, but sophistication and style.

About half way down this block, find the bi-color column that separates the Adidas store and the Frye store, next to the door that says 115. Take out that photo you took of the foundry stamp on Greene Street in front of Louis Vuitton, and look at the foot of this column. This building’s facade was also made by J.L Jackson Iron Works. Because these cast iron facades were made in foundries, architects could order building elements from a catalog, resulting in multiple SoHo facades that were made by the same foundries, sometimes even using the same elements. And of course, if you hold your magnet up to this column, it’ll stick. 

Keep walking in the same direction. When you reach the corner, cross Mercer and stand in front of the blue-grey building with large plate glass windows at 101 Spring Street.

When artists transformed SoHo, they inadvertently sparked the gentrification of the neighborhood. Joyce Kozloff witnessed SoHo’s gentrification firsthand. Here, she describes a phenomenon now known in real estate circles as “the SoHo effect.”  

Well, SoHo became a role model. I mean, many other cities, artists moved into warehouse districts. Unfortunately this turns out to be the shock troops for gentrification, but artists do need space and artists know how to create space. And the gentrification of neighborhoods processes faster and faster, it speeds it up. I mean, we had a certain amount of time  to live this quiet, anonymous life in our community before it started to change.

73 Wooster Street \|||// Look across the street. Do you see the building with the dark green trim? I had a weekly play date on the second floor of this building until I was about 5. Like 420 West Broadway, 80 Wooster was another epicenter of artists’ SoHo, and it was also known just by its street address. This building was the very first SoHo artists’ cooperative and also where George Maciunas founded the Fluxus art movement, which included artists like Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono. 

80 Wooster was also the home of Cinematheque, an experimental film and performance space founded by filmmaker Jonas Mekas, where Philip Glass and Richard Forman, among others, debuted early work.

Continue walking to the next corner. 

Once artists began living and working in lofts that they owned as part of a cooperative, because they no longer rented their lofts, they were less likely to be priced out by market forces, though many continued to rent. In fact, most of the artists who live in SoHo today, and there are still many of them around, own their lofts. They live here quietly above the clothing stores, making art in the live-work spaces they made home fifty years ago.

Cross Spring Street and then turn right to walk east on Spring.

The 1970s and 80s were the heyday for art and art galleries in SoHo. This period perfectly coincided with my childhood and teenage years.  By the 1990s, after I graduated from college, SoHo had transformed significantly from the neighborhood of my youth. Artists began leaving SoHo for Brooklyn and Queens as early as the mid-1970s due to rising rents, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that galleries were priced out and forced to move northward to West Chelsea, being replaced by the fashion brands that redefined SoHo as a retail destination. 

In the early 2000s, SoHo’s retail scene ramped up when luxury brands such as Prada and Chanel opened up shop here. As I saw these stores that I could never afford shopping in open one after the other and the sale prices of lofts skyrocket, I asked myself, how much higher could prices go? I thought they must have plateaued, but then Tiffany’s and Gucci opened in the 2010s and upped the retail game even more. 


When you reach the corner, cross Greene and continue down Spring.

Why did every sought-after brand open here and not somewhere else? It’s because of SoHo’s history as an artist enclave where creativity and expression bloomed out of the ashes of New York’s industrial past. SoHo’s almost mythical image looms large in the public imagination. SoHo artists and the cast iron buildings they live and work in came to symbolize not just creativity, but sophistication and style.

About half way down this block, find the bi-color column that separates the Adidas store and the Frye store, next to the door that says 115. Take out that photo you took of the foundry stamp on Greene Street in front of Louis Vuitton, and look at the foot of this column. This building’s facade was also made by J.L Jackson Iron Works. Because these cast iron facades were made in foundries, architects could order building elements from a catalog, resulting in multiple SoHo facades that were made by the same foundries, sometimes even using the same elements. And of course, if you hold your magnet up to this column, it’ll stick. 

Keep walking in the same direction. When you reach the corner, cross Mercer and stand in front of the blue-grey building with large plate glass windows at 101 Spring Street.

When artists transformed SoHo, they inadvertently sparked the gentrification of the neighborhood. Joyce Kozloff witnessed SoHo’s gentrification firsthand. Here, she describes a phenomenon now known in real estate circles as “the SoHo effect.”  

Well, SoHo became a role model. I mean, many other cities, artists moved into warehouse districts. Unfortunately this turns out to be the shock troops for gentrification, but artists do need space and artists know how to create space. And the gentrification of neighborhoods processes faster and faster, it speeds it up. I mean, we had a certain amount of time  to live this quiet, anonymous life in our community before it started to change.

soho-fluxhouse.jpg

Fluxhouse

Fluxhouse 8.18.mp3

This is the only single-use cast iron building left in SoHo. It’s the former home and studio of artist Donald Judd, and now home to Judd Foundation, who has meticulously restored the building’s exterior back to its 1870 origins. The Foundation has also preserved the interior, including the furnishings and works of art, to reflect how Judd lived and worked in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Look through that plate glass window. Imagine the room inside was your home and studio. Tall ceilings, large windows, and vast open spaces. These are the things that drew artists to SoHo and compelled them to fight for their right to stay and work.

I’ve visited this building several times on guided tours. Judd Foundation has, in essence, created the physical embodiment of what SoHo once was. It’s a trace left by a bygone group of people in a bygone era, whose ethos is present in what’s preserved here, like an archaeological dig that uncovers a lost civilization. Entry is by appointment only, and If you have time to return, this building is well worth a visit.

Before we go, look down at the raised platform you’re standing on. These are yet another type of vault lights.

Now turn left on Mercer and keep walking.

Over the years, my sister Mimi and I have traded stories back and forth about the dozens of artists and local luminaries we were lucky to meet because we live here. As Mimi puts it,

Since we're in SoHo. And I say it often, the center of the universe, because everything comes by.
If you stay still, you'll see everyone.

At some point, it also became clear to us that our mother had become a sort of neighborhood celebrity among celebrities. When my parents owned a gallery on this street, my mom met all sorts of people.


I mean, she met everybody. DeNiro came by and Yoko Ono came by and Willem Defoe used to tap on the window and wave at my mom. 

But it wasn’t just sharing sidewalks with actors and artists that made growing up in SoHo special. By living in the center of the universe, we came of age with a heightened sense of possibility.

Stop across the street from 119 Mercer, which is the red brick building with the Rag & Bone store.

525 Broadway \|||// This is the only single-use cast iron building left in SoHo. It’s the former home and studio of artist Donald Judd, and now home to Judd Foundation, who has meticulously restored the building’s exterior back to its 1870 origins. The Foundation has also preserved the interior, including the furnishings and works of art, to reflect how Judd lived and worked in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Look through that plate glass window. Imagine the room inside was your home and studio. Tall ceilings, large windows, and vast open spaces. These are the things that drew artists to SoHo and compelled them to fight for their right to stay and work.

I’ve visited this building several times on guided tours. Judd Foundation has, in essence, created the physical embodiment of what SoHo once was. It’s a trace left by a bygone group of people in a bygone era, whose ethos is present in what’s preserved here, like an archaeological dig that uncovers a lost civilization. Entry is by appointment only, and If you have time to return, this building is well worth a visit.

Before we go, look down at the raised platform you’re standing on. These are yet another type of vault lights.

Now turn left on Mercer and keep walking.

Over the years, my sister Mimi and I have traded stories back and forth about the dozens of artists and local luminaries we were lucky to meet because we live here. As Mimi puts it,

Since we're in SoHo. And I say it often, the center of the universe, because everything comes by.
If you stay still, you'll see everyone.

At some point, it also became clear to us that our mother had become a sort of neighborhood celebrity among celebrities. When my parents owned a gallery on this street, my mom met all sorts of people.


I mean, she met everybody. DeNiro came by and Yoko Ono came by and Willem Defoe used to tap on the window and wave at my mom. 

But it wasn’t just sharing sidewalks with actors and artists that made growing up in SoHo special. By living in the center of the universe, we came of age with a heightened sense of possibility.

Stop across the street from 119 Mercer, which is the red brick building with the Rag & Bone store.

Judd Foundation LPC.jpg

Donald Judd's Studio

Donald Judd's Studio 8.18.mp3

Look up at this building’s facade. Notice the cast iron details and the shaftway signs and the fire escapes. My friend Zoe, whose voice you’ve heard a couple of times now, used to live in this building, and she and I spent a lot of time at her house or at mine down the street, hanging out on our fire escapes, people watching, and sometimes getting into a little trouble, but all innocent fun!

From up there, you can see everything that’s going on on this block, without being seen yourself. Fire escapes were such a big part of my childhood. Back in the early days most people didn’t have doorbells because, as I said before, people weren’t supposed to be living here. Instead, you had to scream up to a loft to let someone know you were there and they would throw you a key in an old sock so you could open the door. Or you could lower a basket on a string with the key. We ran with this idea and used baskets to lower messages to passersby.

I lived next door to a major gallery back when we were in high school. When we hung out on my fire escape, we would also see artists like Andy Warhol and Jim Jarmusch on their way to see Keith Haring’s show just downstairs. They were easy to spot because of their fluffy white hair dos. 

Keep walking in the same direction on Mercer Street.

As I mentioned before, my parents also had a gallery for a while, on the ground floor of our building. It was called the Cast Iron Gallery, named not for the kind of art they exhibited, but after the type of building it was in. 

My mom is a people person, and she talked to everyone who came in, including famous people. She chatted up David Bowie, who ended up buying a sculpture. Even on the street, if she saw Keith Haring, she’d yell, “Hi Keith!” The first couple of times he probably thought she was a crazy fan, but by the third or fourth time, he began to recognize her and greeted her warmly. 

Cross Prince and keep going.


Mimi remembers the day Ron Howard walked in.

And he walks in. We're all staring at him. And then, so he comes in, he looks at the paintings. And then he says, well, have a good day. And then he turns to leave, go out the door, my mom says, “Happy Days!” Me and my sister die. 

Yep, we were mortified. 


Have you ever heard of dumpster diving? It’s when you climb into a dumpster in search of salvageable trash. I don’t think there’s anyone who lived in SoHo in the 1970’s who has never been inside a dumpster.  

When we moved into our loft, it was just a raw space, so most of my childhood home was furnished with items carefully selected from an array of dumpsters. There was, however,  one thing that was in the loft when we moved in: an enormous block of foam with huge chunks gouged out. My sister and I loved that piece of foam. 

I just remember it being a big piece of Swiss cheese, like a hunk of Swiss cheese in my house, in this loft. 

We jumped on it and crawled under it and squeezed it with all our might. 

Up ahead, pause by the black painted staircase to your right. 

Then one day the man who lived in the loft before us came to pick up his John Chamberlain sculpture, and he was pretty mad that it had dents and footprints and probably rips in it. How were we supposed to know it was a valuable piece of art?

120 Mercer Street \|||// Look up at this building’s facade. Notice the cast iron details and the shaftway signs and the fire escapes. My friend Zoe, whose voice you’ve heard a couple of times now, used to live in this building, and she and I spent a lot of time at her house or at mine down the street, hanging out on our fire escapes, people watching, and sometimes getting into a little trouble, but all innocent fun!

From up there, you can see everything that’s going on on this block, without being seen yourself. Fire escapes were such a big part of my childhood. Back in the early days most people didn’t have doorbells because, as I said before, people weren’t supposed to be living here. Instead, you had to scream up to a loft to let someone know you were there and they would throw you a key in an old sock so you could open the door. Or you could lower a basket on a string with the key. We ran with this idea and used baskets to lower messages to passersby.

I lived next door to a major gallery back when we were in high school. When we hung out on my fire escape, we would also see artists like Andy Warhol and Jim Jarmusch on their way to see Keith Haring’s show just downstairs. They were easy to spot because of their fluffy white hair dos. 

Keep walking in the same direction on Mercer Street.

As I mentioned before, my parents also had a gallery for a while, on the ground floor of our building. It was called the Cast Iron Gallery, named not for the kind of art they exhibited, but after the type of building it was in. 

My mom is a people person, and she talked to everyone who came in, including famous people. She chatted up David Bowie, who ended up buying a sculpture. Even on the street, if she saw Keith Haring, she’d yell, “Hi Keith!” The first couple of times he probably thought she was a crazy fan, but by the third or fourth time, he began to recognize her and greeted her warmly. 

Cross Prince and keep going.


Mimi remembers the day Ron Howard walked in.

And he walks in. We're all staring at him. And then, so he comes in, he looks at the paintings. And then he says, well, have a good day. And then he turns to leave, go out the door, my mom says, “Happy Days!” Me and my sister die. 

Yep, we were mortified. 


Have you ever heard of dumpster diving? It’s when you climb into a dumpster in search of salvageable trash. I don’t think there’s anyone who lived in SoHo in the 1970’s who has never been inside a dumpster.  

When we moved into our loft, it was just a raw space, so most of my childhood home was furnished with items carefully selected from an array of dumpsters. There was, however,  one thing that was in the loft when we moved in: an enormous block of foam with huge chunks gouged out. My sister and I loved that piece of foam. 

I just remember it being a big piece of Swiss cheese, like a hunk of Swiss cheese in my house, in this loft. 

We jumped on it and crawled under it and squeezed it with all our might. 

Up ahead, pause by the black painted staircase to your right. 

Then one day the man who lived in the loft before us came to pick up his John Chamberlain sculpture, and he was pretty mad that it had dents and footprints and probably rips in it. How were we supposed to know it was a valuable piece of art?

soho-zoe house.jpg

Zoe's House

Zoe's House 8.19.mp3

Beginning around 1985 or so, Chris, a man experiencing homelessness, lived at the top of this staircase. This building was once the location of the New Museum, which is now a few blocks away on the Bowery, and this was their back door. Jon Bon Jovi lived in the penthouse for many years, but Chris’s life was very different from his, though I used to see them chatting on the sidewalk sometimes. 

In some ways, Chris's story parallels the story of artists' SoHo, when people lived in unusual spaces. Artists lived in repurposed lofts and shared the neighborhood with other folks who were challenging the definitions of home.

Long gone are the days when Chris was paid twenty bucks a week to sweep in front of the vacant building on the corner that now houses the Mercer Hotel. Chris once told me that he used to stay in the building sometimes, back when it was empty, and that he once had the whole fifth floor to himself for a while, with running water and electricity. But most of the time, Chris lived here.

I often wondered what Chris thought of all of this, the galleries morphing into boutiques, the bohemian artists morphing into fashionistas. Wherever he is now, Chris has his own SoHo story, one only he can tell: he watched our block change from day to day over a thirty year period from a street-level perspective.  

Turn around and you’ll see a three-story building directly across the street with a flagpole and a sign that says “Firemen’s Hall.” 

When I moved onto this block when I was 5, this building was a firehouse. We heard sirens 24/7.  For years after that, this building was a modern dance venue and more recently, Dolce & Gabbana. As a retail space, the store was quite impressive. They went all out, creating curated graffiti-covered walls as a backdrop to tastefully garish furniture. 

The building now sits empty and I find myself wondering, what’ll replace it? Another clothing store? I’d love it if it became some kind of community center, something that SoHo is sorely lacking, but I think that’s not likely, real estate prices being what they are now. 

Keep walking up Mercer and then take a right on West Houston. 

So now you know that SoHo has, in a sense, come full circle, that it is a shopping area for the second time in 200 years. Post-COVD, SoHo will reinvent itself yet again. Although many clothing stores remain, and new ones even opened recently, many did not survive the quarantines and lockdowns. There is talk of upzoning SoHo to make way for new kinds of development. What will come next is anyone’s guess.

Turn right on West Houston. 

I founded SoHo Memory Project more than a decade ago as a virtual space where my community could shape a collective memory of a special place, at a special moment in time.

I strive to preserve SoHo’s past so that present and future generations understand our neighborhood’s rich history and can make informed decisions as we shape its future. Over the past ten years, this project has grown in leaps and bounds to encompass more than I could have ever hoped for. 

Pause up ahead just before you reach the intersection, and look up. 

The continuing success of SoHo Memory Project tells me that people want to hear these stories and that they're listening. I tell the stories I’ve collected through the written word, through objects, photography, film, oral history, and now through an audio walk. 

58387 Broadway \|||// Beginning around 1985 or so, Chris, a man experiencing homelessness, lived at the top of this staircase. This building was once the location of the New Museum, which is now a few blocks away on the Bowery, and this was their back door. Jon Bon Jovi lived in the penthouse for many years, but Chris’s life was very different from his, though I used to see them chatting on the sidewalk sometimes. 

In some ways, Chris's story parallels the story of artists' SoHo, when people lived in unusual spaces. Artists lived in repurposed lofts and shared the neighborhood with other folks who were challenging the definitions of home.

Long gone are the days when Chris was paid twenty bucks a week to sweep in front of the vacant building on the corner that now houses the Mercer Hotel. Chris once told me that he used to stay in the building sometimes, back when it was empty, and that he once had the whole fifth floor to himself for a while, with running water and electricity. But most of the time, Chris lived here.

I often wondered what Chris thought of all of this, the galleries morphing into boutiques, the bohemian artists morphing into fashionistas. Wherever he is now, Chris has his own SoHo story, one only he can tell: he watched our block change from day to day over a thirty year period from a street-level perspective.  

Turn around and you’ll see a three-story building directly across the street with a flagpole and a sign that says “Firemen’s Hall.” 

When I moved onto this block when I was 5, this building was a firehouse. We heard sirens 24/7.  For years after that, this building was a modern dance venue and more recently, Dolce & Gabbana. As a retail space, the store was quite impressive. They went all out, creating curated graffiti-covered walls as a backdrop to tastefully garish furniture. 

The building now sits empty and I find myself wondering, what’ll replace it? Another clothing store? I’d love it if it became some kind of community center, something that SoHo is sorely lacking, but I think that’s not likely, real estate prices being what they are now. 

Keep walking up Mercer and then take a right on West Houston. 

So now you know that SoHo has, in a sense, come full circle, that it is a shopping area for the second time in 200 years. Post-COVD, SoHo will reinvent itself yet again. Although many clothing stores remain, and new ones even opened recently, many did not survive the quarantines and lockdowns. There is talk of upzoning SoHo to make way for new kinds of development. What will come next is anyone’s guess.

Turn right on West Houston. 

I founded SoHo Memory Project more than a decade ago as a virtual space where my community could shape a collective memory of a special place, at a special moment in time.

I strive to preserve SoHo’s past so that present and future generations understand our neighborhood’s rich history and can make informed decisions as we shape its future. Over the past ten years, this project has grown in leaps and bounds to encompass more than I could have ever hoped for. 

Pause up ahead just before you reach the intersection, and look up. 

The continuing success of SoHo Memory Project tells me that people want to hear these stories and that they're listening. I tell the stories I’ve collected through the written word, through objects, photography, film, oral history, and now through an audio walk. 

soho-chris old new museum.jpg

Chris's Staircase

Chris's Staircase 8.17.mp3

We’re back where we started, at the Gateway to SoHo.

We’ve quite literally come full circle, just as SoHo has, in some ways. What was a shopping district in the mid-1800s is a shopping district once again, but the community of artists who lived and worked here left a permanent impression. 

And it’s important not to talk about SoHo artists in the past tense. SoHo is still home to many artists, even today, though most of the art galleries have moved on. And, there’s still plenty of art to be found throughout the neighborhood.

Like the Wall here, just above you. Forrest Myers created The Wall in 1973 through City Walls, a not-for-profit organization that worked with artists and communities to revitalize New York City through public art, including that fading Richard Haas’ mural we saw earlier.  In 1997, the building’s owner wanted to take The Wall down, and replace it with an advertising billboard.

Lawsuits ensued over the next decade over who had the right to decide what the wall could be used for, resulting in a compromise in 2007, where the piece was reinstalled using new components and raised 18 feet higher on the building’s façade, thus making room for advertising billboards underneath.

The Wall has since coexisted with those four billboards, seen by the millions of people who cross Houston Street each year, marking the gateway to the neighborhood where art and commerce meet.

Growing up in SoHo taught me to think that anything is possible. My parents’ generation made something out of nothing. They willed a rose out of ashes, and for a brief moment in time, SoHo was a place, where anyone who wanted to make beauty and community, was welcome. Then the moment passed, but we still have a trace of it left in SoHo’s bones, a trace worth remembering.

At the same time, it’s important to recognize that artists’ SoHo survives and thrives in the 2020s. Though many artists moved on over the decades, others still live and work here. They’re carrying on the neighborhood’s creative legacy. 

In New York, things are always changing, and they change pretty fast. What will SoHo be 10 or 20 years from now? That’s not for me to decide, it’s up to my daughter’s generation, the innovators and trendsetters of today. That's why it's so important to me that she and her peers appreciate the history of SoHo, how it evolved, and what makes it so unique. 

It’s easy to confuse memory with nostalgia. But by remembering - by repopulating the past - we become closer to our cities. Designer retail may come and go, and at the end of the day, retail is about things. SoHo’s artistic history is about the people who shaped this place. By preserving artists’ SoHo, by understanding how artists created a community within these 26 blocks, the neighborhood becomes a character in its own story. 

Sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward. I hope whoever lives here in the future, or opens a business here, works here, visits here, or just passes through here, will treat this neighborhood with the appreciation and respect it deserves. I hope they’ll never let it lose the ingenuity and culture of cooperation that transformed a collection of cast-iron buildings, loading docks, and lofts into a community.

Thank you for walking with me today. I hope the next time you walk through SoHo, you'll see it in a brand new light. 

This walk was written and produced by me, Yukie Ohta, as a collaboration between the SoHo Memory Project and Gesso.

If you’d like to stay in touch, please follow my instagram @sohomemory. You can also follow @gesso.app

The tour was edited and produced by Sarah Holtz with Executive Producers Henna Wang and Michael Reynolds.

Special thanks to our interviewees -- Shael Shapiro, Aaron Shkuda, Ken Hiratsuka, Richard Haas, Joyce Kozloff, Paola and Zoë, Charles Leslie, and Mimi Ohta, for sharing their SoHo memories. 

The work we do to preserve SoHo’s important legacy is completely funded by small donations. Please consider supporting SoHo Memory Project today by clicking on the donate button. 

15-3 West Houston Street \|||// We’re back where we started, at the Gateway to SoHo.

We’ve quite literally come full circle, just as SoHo has, in some ways. What was a shopping district in the mid-1800s is a shopping district once again, but the community of artists who lived and worked here left a permanent impression. 

And it’s important not to talk about SoHo artists in the past tense. SoHo is still home to many artists, even today, though most of the art galleries have moved on. And, there’s still plenty of art to be found throughout the neighborhood.

Like the Wall here, just above you. Forrest Myers created The Wall in 1973 through City Walls, a not-for-profit organization that worked with artists and communities to revitalize New York City through public art, including that fading Richard Haas’ mural we saw earlier.  In 1997, the building’s owner wanted to take The Wall down, and replace it with an advertising billboard.

Lawsuits ensued over the next decade over who had the right to decide what the wall could be used for, resulting in a compromise in 2007, where the piece was reinstalled using new components and raised 18 feet higher on the building’s façade, thus making room for advertising billboards underneath.

The Wall has since coexisted with those four billboards, seen by the millions of people who cross Houston Street each year, marking the gateway to the neighborhood where art and commerce meet.

Growing up in SoHo taught me to think that anything is possible. My parents’ generation made something out of nothing. They willed a rose out of ashes, and for a brief moment in time, SoHo was a place, where anyone who wanted to make beauty and community, was welcome. Then the moment passed, but we still have a trace of it left in SoHo’s bones, a trace worth remembering.

At the same time, it’s important to recognize that artists’ SoHo survives and thrives in the 2020s. Though many artists moved on over the decades, others still live and work here. They’re carrying on the neighborhood’s creative legacy. 

In New York, things are always changing, and they change pretty fast. What will SoHo be 10 or 20 years from now? That’s not for me to decide, it’s up to my daughter’s generation, the innovators and trendsetters of today. That's why it's so important to me that she and her peers appreciate the history of SoHo, how it evolved, and what makes it so unique. 

It’s easy to confuse memory with nostalgia. But by remembering - by repopulating the past - we become closer to our cities. Designer retail may come and go, and at the end of the day, retail is about things. SoHo’s artistic history is about the people who shaped this place. By preserving artists’ SoHo, by understanding how artists created a community within these 26 blocks, the neighborhood becomes a character in its own story. 

Sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward. I hope whoever lives here in the future, or opens a business here, works here, visits here, or just passes through here, will treat this neighborhood with the appreciation and respect it deserves. I hope they’ll never let it lose the ingenuity and culture of cooperation that transformed a collection of cast-iron buildings, loading docks, and lofts into a community.

Thank you for walking with me today. I hope the next time you walk through SoHo, you'll see it in a brand new light. 

This walk was written and produced by me, Yukie Ohta, as a collaboration between the SoHo Memory Project and Gesso.

If you’d like to stay in touch, please follow my instagram @sohomemory. You can also follow @gesso.app

The tour was edited and produced by Sarah Holtz with Executive Producers Henna Wang and Michael Reynolds.

Special thanks to our interviewees -- Shael Shapiro, Aaron Shkuda, Ken Hiratsuka, Richard Haas, Joyce Kozloff, Paola and Zoë, Charles Leslie, and Mimi Ohta, for sharing their SoHo memories. 

The work we do to preserve SoHo’s important legacy is completely funded by small donations. Please consider supporting SoHo Memory Project today by clicking on the donate button.

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