Beyond the Wall: Redefining City Walls' “Gateway to Soho”

Abstract

In recent years, Forrest Myers' hybrid work of public art Untitled (The Wall) (1973) has been described as both serving as and standing at the “Gateway to SoHo.” This article challenges these ascriptions by reclaiming the literal and historical places of two now-destroyed murals – Jason Crum's Peace (1969) and Mel Pekarsky's Untitled (1972) – alongside Myers' work on Houston Street in Lower Manhattan. Positioned amid municipal and community efforts to provide definition for an emergent postindustrial SoHo neighborhood, these three boundary-defining murals are representative of the public art organization City Walls, Inc.'s mission to mobilize large-scale works of art to define meaningful places within the mapped landscape of 1960s and 1970s Manhattan.

KEYWORDS::

• Murals
• City Walls
• Jason Crum
• SoHo
• Houston Street

Notes

¹ Letter from Charles J. Tannenbaum to Frank Gilbert, 27 Aug. 1973; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 3; 15; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

² In an August 27, 1973 letter sent by Charles J. Tannenbaum, the building's owner, to Frank Gilbert, then-director of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Tannenbaum wrote, “The creation of a visually appealing treatment of our northern wall standing at the very gateway to the District symbolizes its present modern-day artistic vitality.” Several months earlier, Tannenbaum used a slight but crucial variation on this same phrase in a letter to Donald M. Oenslager, then-president of the New York City Arts Commission. In this letter from January 19, 1973, Tannenbaum described his building as standing “at the Broadway gateway to SoHo.” This phrase appears to have been readily used by Tannenbaum. Almost one year prior, in a March 27, 1972 letter from Doris Freedman to Tannenbaum, Freedman praised Tannenbaum's self-designation of his family's building: “As you so aptly put it, your building is at the gateway of SoHo...” These letters can be found in the Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 3; 15; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries. In 1997, the building's then-owners announced plans to remove the entire mural. Citing water damage to the wall as a result of corrosive connections in the channel irons, the owners took the initiative to start the de-installation process by removing a section of irons on the eastern edge of the work and erecting scaffolding in front of the rest of Myers' work. Myers charged the owners with intentionally allowing the work to fall into disrepair, enacting “demolition by neglect.” During the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearings and legal trial that followed, those supporting Myers' work (including Lisa Phillips, Executive Director of the New Museum, and Mark A. Silberman, legal counsel for the Landmarks Preservation Commission) cited the work's role as a “gateway” to assert its historical and continued cultural value. It was in light of this most recent debate over the protected status of Myers' work that the plaque described above was installed. The plaque dates the work to 1973. However, for several years, Myers' work was captioned in situ with the artist's initials and “72.” Adding further confusion to the dating of the mural, the project report of the work in the Public Art Fund Archives' project files lists the date of installation as January 1974. See Jesse McKinley, “F.Y.I.,” The New York Times, 7 Jan. 1996: CY2; Daniel Grant, “Saving Public Sculpture,” American Artist 64.697 (Aug. 2000): 18–22; Danny Lee, “Landmarking of a Wall Sculpture Hits Bricks-and-Mortar Opposition,” The New York Times, 21 May 2006: CY6; “‘Wall’ Dispute in SoHo Lands in Court,” The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2001: B4; and Daisy Hernandez, “Pause in Landmark Fight So Mural's Real Wall Can Be Fixed,” The New York Times, 3 Oct. 2002: B1.

³ By the end of the 1970s, members of City Walls, representing themselves as such, had been invited to serve as consultants for projects in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Jersey City, Kansas City, Oakland, St. Louis, and Syracuse.

⁴ In total, City Walls was responsible for sponsoring five murals along Houston Street. The fourth was another Mel Pekarsky mural at the intersection of Houston Street and Mulberry Street. Visible along the northern side of Houston Street, this large floral mural was painted in 1971 on the southern façade of Saint Barnabas Mission, overlooking a fenced in playground and an adjacent parking lot. Dorothy Gillespie painted the fifth mural in 1975, just south of the intersection of Houston Street and Mercer Street on the northern-fronting wall of 169 Mercer. Despite its visibility along the southern side of Houston Street, Gillespie's mural falls beyond the chronological scope of this study.

⁵ Crum's mural was visible until the early 1980s, when it was partially obscured by a new two-story building. Later, in 1998, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission provided approval to the owner of the building on which traces of Crum's mural remained to install commercial advertisements. Pekarsky's mural was similarly replaced by advertisements, although the date when this happened is less clear. Reports filed with the Landmarks Preservation Commission in the early 1990s seeking approval for these new advertisements do not make mention of the mural. These recent histories are briefly discussed in the court opinion of the “Board of Managers of Soho International Arts Condominium v. City of New York, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Forrest Myers,” 8 Sep. 2004, accessible at http://ny.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.20040908_0001681.SNY.htm/qx.

⁶ The rare exception to treating Myers' Untitled alone as serving as the “gateway to SoHo” is found in a November 21, 1980 letter requesting the refurbishing of Myers' work. Written by Jenny Dixon, then-director of the Public Art Fund, in response to an earlier announcement of the building's owner's intention to repaint the entire façade gray, the letter described how several City Walls' works directly contributed to constructing a new public face for the downtown neighborhood. Dixon described how “these wall paintings definetely [sic] brought attention to Soho. You may be familiar with the paintings on each side of West Broadway and Houston Street. They are commonly referred to as the ‘Gates of Soho.’” Dixon's brief suggestion of there being multiple murals and potentially multiple “gates” informs much of my current research on this topic. Letter from Jenny Dixon to Stanley M. Riker (Riker's Management Corporation), 21 Nov. 1980, Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 4; 1; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

⁷ For only a partial list of the treatments of this topic, see Charles R. Simpson, SoHo: The Artist in the City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981); James R. Hudson, The Unanticipated City: Loft Conversions in Lower Manhattan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987); Sharon Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989); and Richard Kostelanetz, SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony (London: Routledge, 2003).

⁸Aaron Peter Shkuda, “From Urban Renewal to Gentrification: Artists, Cultural Capital, and the Remaking of New York's SoHo Neighborhood, 1950–1990,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2010.

⁹ City Walls, “City Walls & Morris Heights Neighborhood Improvement Associations Sponsor Alan Sonfist Wallpainting for Bronx Community Garden,” Press Release, 6 Oct. 1978.

¹⁰ In April 1967, the artist Tania was contracted to complete a mural for 10 Evergreen Avenue in Brooklyn as part of a program overseen by landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg to convert 10 vacant lots into pocket parks. Considered the period's first non-commercial outdoor wall painting in New York City, the impetus for urban regeneration spurring the creation of Tania's Untitled certainly informed D'Arcangelo's painting several months later. Although Tania's Brooklyn mural would be listed within rosters of City Walls' murals, its existence nonetheless belongs to a different system of sponsorship.

¹¹Grace Glueck, “Art Notes: Tomorrow, the World,” The New York Times, 11 May 1969: D23. Bromberg was a subject of a profile in The New York Times the following year, although referred to as “David Blomberg” throughout the article. Described as an “ascetic-looking, soft-voiced man with the eyes of a Savonarola sizing up possible converts,” the article cast Bromberg as equal parts contractual negotiator and urban visionary. See Harold C. Schonberg, “Someone There Is Who Loves a Wall,” The New York Times, 31 May 1970: Section 8, 1–2.

¹² City Walls artists approached landlords directly or through City Walls representatives acting as proxies. In some cases, building owners independently contacted the group and requested that several mural proposals be submitted for a potential commission. In almost every case, it was the owner of the building on which the mural was to be a painted who could unilaterally grant permission for a project. The exception was Myers' mural, which presented unanticipated logistical challenges. Even after Charles J. Tannenbaum assented to City Walls' use of the Houston Street–facing façade of his building, the project required approval by a number of municipal agencies. The New York City Arts Commission needed to determine the artistic merit of the project, the Building and Highways Department needed to sign off on the structural drawings of the perpendicular sculptural projections, and a franchise permit was required by the city for art agency's use of the “taxable airspace” above Houston Street. City Walls needed Landmark Preservation Commission approval as well. As a result of the delays encountered with granting these previous approvals, the date set for the painting and installation process fell after the designation of lot as a part of a historic landmark district in 1973.

¹³Peter Blake, “Graffiti Are Growing Up,” New York 1.4 (29 Apr. 1968): 32. Blake surveyed several recent Bromberg projects, alternating between praising the results (e.g. D'Arcangelo's mural on 9th Street was “Bold…and smashing” and Crum's mural at 140 Church Street was “the best,” as “it glitters like Lucy in the Sky, with Diamonds”) and offering more terse evaluations (e.g. Wiegand's mural at 317 East 9th Street was “done in red, blue and venetian blinds” and Crum's mural at 324 East 9th Street “fits in nicely with the fire escapes”).

¹⁴ D'Arcangelo's first mural was financed through contributions by friends and relatives of Bromberg. However, over the next several years, grants were sought from corporations, private individuals, and local and national public arts programs. Soon after the group's founding in 1967, it received financial support from the J. M. Kaplan Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. This was later supplemented by private donations by David Rockefeller and William Bernhard and additional institutional support by the Merrill, Noble, and Buttenweiser Foundations, as well as National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council for the Arts grants in 1971. The Kaplan Foundation's early partial funding can be attributed to Joan K. Davidson's dual roles as vice president of the foundation and an early president of City Walls.

¹⁵ The title of this mural is sometimes recorded as …in the Astor Bar. This mural holds the distinction of being the first mural to be completed under the auspices of the then-recently formed Department of Cultural Affairs. Doris Freedman was appointed the first director of this new municipal department upon its establishment in 1967. In advance of the unveiling and dedication of Wiegand's mural on August 18, 1968, August Heckscher, the city's Administrator of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, heralded the work as starting a new city-wide initiative to “unite artist and community in the creation of neighborhood landmarks and community beautification” through mural painting. See Department of Parks, City of New York, “First Outdoor Mural by Contemporary New York Artist to be Presented,” Press Release, 13 Aug. 1968.

¹⁶ See note 29.

¹⁷ Plans for dissolving the group had been discussed in City Walls board meetings as early as 1974. See Board of Directors' minutes, 23 Oct. 1974; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 1; 9; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

¹⁸ Freedman quoted in Joseph Gale, “Transforming Sooty Brick and Cracked Concrete into ‘City Walls,’” Newsday 18 Nov. 1974: 12A.

¹⁹Dore Ashton, untitled catalogue essay, in Using Walls (Outdoors) (New York: Jewish Museum, 1970), n.p.

²⁰Doris Freedman, “City Walls, New York: A New Kind of Public Art,” 1975; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 2; 20; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

²¹ Ibid.

²² “City Walls Tour, NYC, Dec. 13, 1970”; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 1; 4; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

²³ Slightly further north than these three addresses, yet still within the range of murals defined by the 1970 tour route diagram, Pekarsky lived in a loft building at 48 West 22nd Street.

²⁴John Canaday, “‘Dutch Genre Drawings’ at the Morgan,” The New York Times, 16 Sep. 1972: 25. This was Canaday's second published attack on City Walls. The first came almost a year earlier, with Canaday's extensive, multi-column coverage of a recently completed City Walls-sponsored mural by Knox Martin at West 19th Street and the West Side Highway. Although conceding that Martin's mural “is easily the best of all the City Walls projects that I have seen,” this was faint praise. Canaday continued describing Martin's mural as “the only one exhibiting a degree of professionalism much beyond what could be expected of a well-supervised school child equipped with a rule, a compass, and a paint box.” Comparing City Walls' previous projects to the “audible goo” of music pervading elevators and managed lobbies, Canaday argued that City Walls' artists did not improve the environment as much as “annihilate it” with brashly colored, out of scale, and irresponsibly placed works. His rhetoric becomes quite strident at times, accusing the muralists of committing “environmental rape” and encouraging the entire City Walls organization to “go soak its head.” It was this earlier article of Canaday's that prompted Freedman and others to submit letters to the editor of the paper countering Canaday's published critique. For Freedman's letter, see note 27. John Canaday, “A Mighty Big Hair of the Dog,” The New York Times, 12 Sep. 1971: D33.

²⁵Emily Genauer, “On the Arts: Lithography Lives in Hard-Edge Era,” Newsday, 3 May 1969: 25 W.

²⁶Emily Genauer, “On the Arts: Planning Culture in the Parks,” Newsday, 7 Sep. 1968: 41 W.

²⁷Doris Freedman, Letter to the editor, The New York Times, 15 Sep. 1971: D40.

²⁸Eva Cockcroft, John Weber, and James Cockcroft, Toward a People's Art: The Contemporary Mural Movement (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977), 36, 40.

²⁹ Davidson resigned her position in 1970, citing her belief that artists should exert more control over the governance of the group. Jason Crum then served as an interim administrator for the organization. However, he would soon claim that the administrative responsibilities entailed in managing the group were “overly burdensome for a practicing artist,” echoing the public reason given for David Bromberg's early retreat from the group soon after its incorporation. In 1971, Doris Freedman was asked to become the president and administrator of City Walls. Doris C. Freedman, “City Walls”; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 2; 20; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

³⁰Joan K. Davidson, untitled catalogue essay, Using Walls (Outdoors), n.p. Italics reflect the formatting of the original catalogue essay.

³¹ Doris Freedman and Kyle Morris, untitled slide lecture narrative; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 1; 1; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries, 18.

³² Ibid., 19.

³³ The first proposal was in 1929. To accommodate a subway system expansion along Houston Street, extending from Sixth Avenue to Essex Street, plans were set in motion for the city to acquire property on either side of Houston Street to increase the width of above ground roadway from 50 to a minimum of 75 feet (ultimately resulting in an average width of 80 feet across Houston Street). In addition to allowing for better circulation of both vehicle and pedestrian traffic, the widening was undertaken to accommodate both above- and below-ground facilities for the expanding subway system. These included allowances for retaining walls of the subway tunnels and new construction for entrance and exit terminals and related transportation kiosks.

³⁴ As another parallel to the 1929 Houston Street widening, the earlier project was part of a greater Manhattan (and specifically Lower Manhattan-focused) development. The 1929 project was carried out alongside the city's condemning and razing of approximately 200 buildings along Chrystie Street and Forsyth Street between Canal Street and Houston Street and approximately 100 buildings along Allen Street and Pike Street. This was part of a combined tenement housing rehabilitation and vehicle expressway construction program within the Lower East Side.

³⁵ To mark the project's conclusion, an official ribbon cutting was held on June 14, 1963 at the intersection of Lafayette Street and Houston Street, reinforcing Lafayette Street's position as a geographic midpoint in the mid-century widening plan.

³⁶ For example, Crum's Surge (1970) on Hart Island was painted with radiating arcs crossing over window frames.

³⁷ The exhibition presented a series of two- by three-foot illuminated color transparencies of nine completed works and painted black-and-white photographs as studies for future projects by Crum, D'Arcangelo, Wiegand, and Tania. Arthur Drexler, then-director of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design, curated this exhibition of projects that seem to have been considered urban design projects rather than “fine art” works proper. The wall text accompanying the exhibition described the works on view as “simple in concept, loud in color, and geometrically patterned” with no connection made to contemporaneous art world styles, movements, or motivations. The works were offered as strategies of “refurbishment” and “community improvement”; a “restful” visual form “powerful enough to drown out all distractions” caused by the urban environment. The exhibition also served as a promotional venture for the group. The final sentence of the wall text stated, “It costs about $4000 to paint one wall; interested citizens alert to a new opportunity in public patronage of the arts should contact Mr. [David] Bromberg: 90 Bedford Street, New York City.” See Museum of Modern Art Press Release No. 52, Apr. 1969, http://www.moma.org/docs/press_archives/4244/releases/MOMA_1969_Jan-June_0077_52.pdf?2010 (accessed 20 Apr. 2013); and PAINTING FOR CITY WALLS, Apr. 17–Jun. 16, 1969, Wall Label, http://www.moma.org/docs/press_archives/4245/releases/MOMA_1969_Jan-June_0078.pdf?2010 (accessed 20 Apr. 2013).

³⁸ These three murals were within two blocks of one another, offering a case for being treated as their own multi-posted gateway to SoHo. Before Untitled (September 1972) and Untitled (July 1971) at the intersection of Houston Street and Mulberry Street (see note 4), Pekarsky painted Untitled (May 1970). With an image of an oversized floral element, this first mural was placed on the northern façade of the Bleeker Street building that occupying the triangle between Lafayette Street and Mulberry Street.

³⁹ The Environmental Protection Agency was founded in December 1970 to monitor several kinds of pollution (e.g. chemical, air, water, and even visual) across the United States. On at least one occasion, Doris Freedman couched City Walls' murals with resolving urban environmental ills in line with those of interest to the Environmental Protection Agency. In an August 23, 1971 press release announcing the selection of Knox Martin to paint a City Walls mural overlooking the West Side Highway, Freedman explained how such large-scale works by reputable contemporary artists can offer “a solution to ever growing visual pollution” overtaking the embattled city. City Walls, Inc. press release, 23 Aug. 1971; Public Art Fund Archive; MSS 270; 3; 5; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

⁴⁰ “Building Up City Walls,” The Art Gallery 14.1 (1970): 25. Soon after the article's publication, there was a notable exception to this otherwise accurate geographic analysis: the successful commission of a City Walls mural for the Lever House, Robert Wiegand's Leverage (1970). Sponsored by the Lever Brothers Company, negotiated with assistance from the Museum of Modern Art, and executed by Environmental Design Associates, Inc., Wiegand's mural was placed on the eastern façade of the Park Avenue International Style building, directly above its U-shaped elevated terrace.

⁴¹ “New York City: Off-beat Touring Includes a Visit to Soho,” Boston Globe, 27 Sep. 1970: A34.

⁴² The origin of “Hell's Hundred Acres” has been attributed to New York City Fire Commissioner Edward F. Cavanagh Jr. in 1960. Cavanagh was responding to a series of fires downtown, tracking their onset and the damage caused by them to lax building code enforcement, limited sprinkler and hydrant availability, and overall hazardous conditions in an area extending from Broadway west to the Hudson River, between Reade Street and 8th Streets. Over the next decade, this name would be more frequently applied to the neighborhood south of Houston Street, rather than to the Greenwich Village and West Village neighborhoods north of Houston Street. For example, see Ralph Katz, “Violations Found Before Loft Fire,” The New York Times, 22 Nov. 1960: 37 and “Warning by Cavanagh: He Weighs Crackdown After Man is Killed in Blaze,” The New York Times, 21 Feb. 1961: 41. For examples of the continued use of “Hell's Hundred Acres” clarifying the location of “SoHo” through the early 1970s, see Grace Glueck, “Palley Gallery Opens Downtown in Uptownish Style,” The New York Times, 16 Mar. 1970: 52; Grace Glueck, “Neighborhoods: SoHo Is Artists' Last Resort,” The New York Times, 11 May 1970: 37; Ada Louise Huxtable, “Architecture: Good Buildings Have Friends,” The New York Times, 24 May 1970: X26; Nick Panagakos, “Hell's Hundred Acres glows with a new light,” The Boston Globe, 19 Jul. 1970: A3; and “Styles from SoHo,” The New York Times, 19 Nov. 1972: 122.

⁴³ A 1970 article in the Boston Globe instructed the reader that the newly established New York City artist neighborhood of SoHo is “pronounced Sow-How (for south of Houston Street).” “New York City: Off-Beat Touring Includes a Visit to Soho,” A34.

⁴⁴Grace Glueck, “Art People,” The New York Times, 9 Jul. 1976: 66.

⁴⁵Grace Glueck, “4 Uptown Art Dealers Set Up in SoHo,” The New York Times, 27 Sep. 1971: 40. These commercial galleries took over a newly refurbished cast-iron loft building that formerly housed the A. G. Nelson Paper Company warehouse. The art transportation company Hague Art Deliveries, which jointly financed the renovation of the building along with Castelli and Emmerich, occupied the ground floor of the building

⁴⁶Peter Schjeldahl, “Sculptors Make it Big Down in SoHo,” The New York Times, 3 Oct. 1971: D23.

⁴⁷ Betty Cuningham as quoted in John Russell, “Is SoHo going Up, Down, Nowhere?,” The New York Times, 12 Mar. 1976: 34.

⁴⁸ For example, see “SoHo Gallery Map,” Art Now Gallery Guide (Sep. 1971): n.p.; and “Map of SoHo Art Galleries,” Winter–Spring 1971; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 18, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. In a 1975 article in a tourism publication, a distinction is drawn between Prince Street and West Broadway. While the former is considered “”SoHo's Main Street” for local residents with bars, informal restaurants and grocery stores catering to a mostly artist population, the latter is characterized as appealing to “the sightseers and gallery patrons who swarm to the community on weekends” with its concentration of not only galleries but also boutiques and new restaurants. Susan Edmiston, “SoHo's Lofty Life-Styles,” Passages 6.4 (Apr. 1975): 13–17.

⁴⁹ For example, see “Location of Artists' Lofts for Cornell Tour” and “Soho Tour,” 1971; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 10, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. See also the “SoHo Artists Festival” map, 1970; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 18, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This map was jointly promoted by the SoHo Artists Association and the New York City Parks Department.

⁵⁰ This earlier program granted permission for artists to reside on the top two floors of buildings in commercially zoned areas, pending appropriate egress allowances, sanitation, and notification to public safety providers.

⁵¹City Planning Commission, Department of City Planning, Zoning Maps and Resolution (New York: City of New York, 1961). For the M1-5 area, see Zoning Maps 12a, 12b, 12c in the “Zoning Maps” section of the resolution.

⁵² The full boundaries wrapped around Houston Street, Mulberry Street, Prince Street, Lafayette Street, Center Street, Broome Street, Baxter Street, Sixth Avenue, Spring Street, Sullivan Street, again across Broome Street, and West Broadway. For period maps, see SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 5, 8 and 13, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

⁵³ Buildings in M1-5A with lots no larger than 3600 square feet, containing loft spaces larger than 1200 square feet and smaller than 3600 feet, and with at least one artist (previously illegally) residing in those lofts prior to September 15, 1970 were granted “as of right” legalization for joint artist living/working quarters. Buildings in M1-5B had similar lot and loft requirements, but lacked the restriction of needing to have previously served as an artist's residence.

⁵⁴ The legalization of individual lofts required an additional approval process. The resident was required to be certified as a practicing artist by an Artist Certification Committee review board overseen by the New York City Department of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs. SOHO REFERENDUM draft, undated; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 5, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and CERTIFICIATION OF ARTISTS APPLYING FOR OCCUPANCY IN THE M1-5 ZONED SOHO, undated; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 18, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

⁵⁵ Although both the eastern and western sides of Crosby Street fell within the newly designated zone, only the eastern side of West Broadway was included as part of the new historic district. The name of the district consciously acknowledged both an older and more recent history: “Cast Iron” referencing the visual style, material form, and structural innovation offered by the concentration of nineteenth-century commercial cast-iron architecture within the area; and “SoHo” acknowledging the designator's adoption and promotion since the 1960s. Cited in the designation report were not only the district's economic, architectural, and entertainment legacies, but also the district's important role in the residential development of the city in both the mid-nineteenth century and contemporary periods. City of New York Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs Administration and Landmarks Preservation Commission, SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District Designation Report (New York: The City of New York, 1973).

⁵⁶ “SoHo Landmark: The Big Step,” SoHo Newsletter 34 (26 Sep. 1973): 1.

⁵⁷ This decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission was part of a cluster of designations made in the summer of 1973. Along with the SoHo Cast Iron district, contemporary designations were made within Carnegie Hill, West 76th Street, and West 105th Street in Manhattan, as well as Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Boerum Hill in Brooklyn. Hearings for each of these districts had initially taken place in 1970. However, the commission passed a moratorium on further designation decisions in December of 1970, citing inadequate staff and budget as reasons for suspending hearings at the time. See Roberta B. Gratz, “Commission Ready to OK 7 Landmark Areas,” New York Post, 24 Mar. 1973: 4; Roberta B. Gratz, “SoHo Wins Historic Designation,” New York Post, 16 Aug. 1973: 4; and Gerhard Liebmann, “SOHO,” undated; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 1, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 17.

⁵⁸ For example, see “Living Big in a Loft,” Life (27 Mar. 1970): 61–64; Dorothy Seiberling, ‘“SoHo’: The Most Exciting Place to Live in the City,” New York (20 May 1974): 52–53; and Joan Kron, “Lofty Living,” New York (20 May 1974): 54–59.

⁵⁹ During the rezoning negotiations between the city and the SoHo Artists Alliance, the city proposed to map the southern boundary of the new M1-5B to exclude two Canal Street blocks and a set of frontages along the northern side of Canal Street and thus keep them open to future real estate development. The blocks in question were instead taken up as part of a separate rezoning and redevelopment plan before the City Planning Commission. See “SURVEY OF ARTISTS AND NON-ARTISTS LIVING IN THE AFFECTED BLOCKS (2 blocks and 2 frontages) ON CANAL ST,” undated; SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 4, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. See also the letter from Ingrid Wiegand to Donald H. Elliot, 14 Nov. 1970, SoHo Artists Association Records, 1968–78, 1, 2, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

⁶⁰ Subway access to SoHo was provided by local service to stations at Spring Street and Sixth Avenue, Prince Street and Broadway, and Spring Street and Lafayette Street.

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Andrew Wasserman

Andrew Wasserman is currently a substitute assistant professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in the department of music and art. He received his Ph.D. in art history and criticism from Stony Brook University in 2012. He is completing a manuscript examining cartographic public art projects in New York City from 1960 to the present.