SoHo (Manhattan)

SoHo is a neighborhood in the New York district of Manhattan. The name is derived from "South of Houston Street." The Houston Street is the northern boundary of SoHo. In the south, SoHo enough to Canal Street. Below the Canal Street is located in the west of Manhattan, the Tribeca neighborhood ( Triangle Below Canal Street). In the north, bordering the SoHo area of ​​New York University, Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, and in some streets, which many on the basis of SoHo time are referred to as NoHo ( "North of Houston Street "). However, it is debatable whether this small area is to be regarded as an independent district. SoHo is considered trendy neighborhood.

History

First settlements on the hilly moorland terrain originated around 1785, when the Broadway, which ended up at this time in the south of SoHo nearby Canal Street, was expanded by Dutch settlers northward.

Manhattan was still independent in 1811. The former city planners developed the so-called " Commissioners ' Plan". Here, the still today existing rectangular street grid, called originated Grid (Grid).

In the period 1800-1850 to let down the increasingly wealthy population of Manhattan in what is now SoHo and moved in this way within a short time the settlement of various businesses, especially along Broadway after. Hotels, theaters, posh shops and stately apartment buildings sprouting like mushrooms out of the ground, creating a complex and lively social life arose.

The SoHo District in today's architectural appearance eventually arose around 1850-1890 when the population increasingly moved on to the more northern districts of Manhattan and in particular the textile industry production and storage facilities built in SoHo. The area developed into a rundown slum in which the labor of factory workers for low pay and poor conditions was exploited in the so-called sweatshops. In the 1960s, these circumstances were terminated by new work rules, which led to a regular flight of manufacturing industry from SoHo, and thus to a substantial orphanhood from the entire district.

The largely vacant and the slow decay prey identified industrial buildings were increasingly based in the course of the 1960s by young artists and professionals, who established extremely affordable studios in the spacious, formerly used for production purposes, large open floors, but also by first illegal conversion of commercial space to residential space spacious loft apartments anymore under most circumstances temporary einrichteten. By consuming renovation and modernization emerged from it in the course of the 1970s and 1980s sought-after and expensive residential and commercial spaces whose rental rates are now among the highest in New York.

In a few decades, SoHo has changed by a multiple gentrification. The generation of young, emerging artists and intellectuals saw as pioneers for the reclamation of the district as a residence, created a new, attractive environment and brought through their own income increase capital in the district. The increased milieu caused his hand that real estate speculators discovered their chances, which is now the pioneer generation has delivered a segregation process and is increasingly replaced by capital nobility and commerce from the district.

Architecture

The core of SoHo, the Cast- Iron Historic District was declared a National Monument due to the particular developed in the American founding period 1840-1890 cast iron construction of warehouse and factory buildings. Almost but this cultural treasure would be lost, as you in 1962 a highway planned across SoHo to achieve better connectivity between North and Südmanhattan. After massive protest these plans were set in 1968. 1971 won the artistic community finally the litigation to preserve the warehouses.

Cast iron was initially used as a decorative element in use. The iron elements were prefabricated industrially and used to give older buildings in the style of the then historicism modern, decorative character. Later, the use of cast iron facades developed into a major and supporting design feature of the building. Your supporting structure allowed large window areas, the absence of brick facades reduced construction costs and allowed very short construction periods of a few months. The interiors were larger and more functional by using slender cast-iron columns. By the way, allowing the material maximum creative freedom: In the style of the time was poured into the facade structures set pieces of French and Italian Baroque and Renaissance buildings, one white or beige brushed to give them the appearance of a stone facade. Altogether there are about 250 in Manhattan Cast- Iron Building, most of them in SoHo.

In the heyday of Cast- Iron Architecture was thought that cast iron solid and fire-resistant than steel is. They built cast-iron facades so often in front of wooden building. How then but realized the iron was exposed to heat as well as by steel and crack as soon as it came into contact with extinguishing water. In 1899 new building regulations have been enacted that required a Hinterbauung of cast iron facades with solid walls. Many of the surviving cast -iron building in SoHo have been built on this principle.

Arts and Culture

The result is the " art district " SoHo in the 1960s. Here met the protagonists of the Fluxus and experimental film scene, to meetings with poetry readings, happenings, performance art held within the dilapidated and empty factory floors etc.. As the driving force can be seen in George Maciunas, who wanted to buy the very cheap to be had factory building " wholesale " and build an alternative, non-commercial culture in the district. In the 1970s, a movement of avant-garde jazz musicians came together in New York. Sam Rivers opened in 1971 in the basement floor of a former factory building in the heart of the NoHo District be Rivbea Studio. Named after Rivers Mrs. Bea Studio soon became the home of the loft jazz avant-garde. In the course of the 1970s in SoHo numerous jazz clubs where famous jazz personalities darboten their art for low Gage emerged. The time of the avant-garde finally came to a slow towards the end of the 1970s when the clubs were commercial and SoHo for " the scene " was too expensive.

SoHo has since increasingly developed into a tourist center and to the shopping mile for lovers of high-end fashion labels. In particular, international fashion companies, such as Chanel show in SoHo with representative offices presence, what drove the rent for the long-established art scene in no more affordable levels.

In addition to a number of well over a hundred, mostly avant-garde galleries and numerous antique dealers, reside in SoHo, the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of African Art, the Guggenheim SoHo was closed in 2002, and the building now houses a Prada store.