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VOICE MARCH 21, 1977 22

SoHo Loft for Sale: 

By Richard Goldstein
The artist is the antenna of the race. -Ezra Pound

Before SoHo, the 42 blocks between Houston and Canal streets were known as "the valley." It was a district of derelict warehouses and seamy sweatshops; the fire department called it "hell's hundred acres." By night, its cavernous streets wre said to be a Mafia dumping ground.

Robert Moses had plans for the valley. An expressway would bisect it at Broome Street, and everything south would be rebuilt, culminating in the World Trade Center. In the '50s, his grand design hovered over the neighborhood, but before it could be implemented, the law required an independent survey of existing real estate. So the city hired Chester A. Rapkin, an economist who would later become a city planning commissioner. Rapkin discovered a wealth of small, diverse industries in those dilapidated lofts, and his 1963 report on the South Houston Industrial District (later shortened to SoHo) caused a stir in municipal circles. But the people of the valley thought nothing could stop Robert Moses. They folded their tents and slipped across the river, into Queens. 

Meanwhile, something prophetic was happening south of Houston Street. Artists had begun to occupy the vacant lofts-surviving through petty bribery or stealth, sleeping on folding beds behind black window shades. They were paying $90 for 3000 square feet of space. Granted, it was splintered, arid space, but the landlords were grateful for any renters, and the streets had a dada elegance. 

The fire department disapproved. It staged a series of search-and-destroy missions against the squatters. In 1961, nearly 2000 of them marched on city hall, demanding legalized work and living space. In response, the city created an Artist in Residence program (A.I.R.), which allowed artists to live in lofts, two to a building, provided a plaque told firemen they were there. During its first year, 3000 artists registered with A.I.R., and they lived largely south of Houston Street. In 1967, when opposition to the lower Manhattan expressway reached its peak, the city was surprised to discover a whole new neighborhood, somewhere between Greenwich Village and Little Italy. Artists had been driven from their lofts in Chelsea and the Battery by massive renewal projects, and they were determined to save SoHo from the master builder's ax.

From the start, the Department of Buildings resented SoHo. Why should artists be given a neighborhood of their own? Wasn't A.I.R. enough? But the artists, and their friends at City Planning, prevailed. In 1970, a "special use" district was created in lofts not less than 1200 or more than 3600 feet. Artists could rent space at the going industrial rate, which was between $1 and $1.50 a square foot. The Rapkin report estimated renovation at $3.10 a square foot. That maant [[meant]] an artists could own a finished loft in SoHo for around $5000. 

Last week, I inquired after one 3700-foot loft on West Broadway and was quoted a price of $70,000. A good buy-at five time what it cost in 1970. As SoHo has grown in prestige, so have the fortunes made in quasi-legal speculation and transference of cooperative stock. That many of these profiteers are artists, and that they had no entrepreneurial interest before SoHo was created, is one of the signal ironies of life in this district. What was mandated by the best minds in city government as a haven for beleaguered artists has become a real-estate boondoggle, attracting what the critic Lucy Lippard calls "a geography of boutiques, bars, and fancy food." And artists who can't afford the price are moving out. 

This is not to say that SoHo is a failure-at least not from an urbanologist's point of view. Its people have transformed a dying section of Manhattan into a thriving neighborhood, an industrial district that doesn't close at dusk. They have created a vital new tax base within the greatest aggregate of artists in the world. Not just painting and sculpture, but the entire corpus of avant-garde music, theater, and dance can be encountered in its environs. Jazz has been vitalized by SoHo's recital lofts, and even rock has felt its minimalist lure. 

The presence of a unified avant garde within a single neighborhood has profoundly altered the New York style, from the way we furnish our homes to the way we envision public space. Even the decision to wear a solid T-shirt over painters' pants reflects the SoHo aesthetic-combining the minimal with the found. And the presence of international capital has given SoHo extraordinary clout. French, German, and Italian dealers are heavily represented in its establishment. Even in American-owned galleries, European art is far more commonplace than on 57th Street. The entire ambience of SoHo reflects what Renee Block calls "a preference for the European in everyday life."

Most of SoHo is owned by artists who never dreamt they would speculate in real estate. But with the growth of chic, a new profession has been created:the artist as landlord.

[[image]] 
VOICE: FRED W. MCDARRAH

Artist Hanna Wilke, an early SoHo resident. The diversity of the neighborhood is one of its pleasures.

Europeans are one reason why SoHo happened where it did instead of in the garment center, where there was more vacant space. Americans came to be near the hardware mills on Canal Street, but Europeans were drawn by the chance to live among the ashes of American enterprise. At its zenith in the 1880s, SoHo was "the Venice of industry." Its cast-iron facades enclosed brutal sweatshops, but along Broadway, were theatres and luxury hotels. In the red-light district that flourished on its side streets, bon vivants mingled with immigrants. If this was not a classless society, at least it was a mingled one, and these streets were a reflection of its presumption, and its dreams. 

Sewing machines still clatter in Chinese-owner factories 

along SoHo's southern rim. Bon vivants still mingle with immigrants on West Broadway. The very walls bespeak a union of art and industry. 

But a spectre is haunting SoHo. It is the spectre of real estate. 

The Artist As Landlord

Most of the buildings in SoHo were owned by single families who operated small factories until the artists came along. In the late '60s they were eager to sell, and large chunks of the neighborhood changed hands. Now most of SoHo is owned by artists who never dreamed they would speculate in real estate. But with the growing demand for space and the dwindling vacancy-rate (from 40