Soho NYC

Soho is a world famous neighborhood in Lower NYC, probably the most famous neighborhood in the world after the Central Park area.

The Name Soho, which was coined in the 1970s, comes from many places. Most people when they here Soho think of SOuth of HOuston street. Other downtown NYC neighborhoods had terms like this too. For example Soho's lesser known "architectural twin" Tribeca, gets its name from TRIangle BElow CAnal street (canal street is Soho's southern border). The Name is also at the same time a play on words. Soho is also a similar well known neighborhood in London, and that gets its name from the "Soho" bird call used by hunters hundreds of years ago in theLondon Soho area.

The Soho NY area was first developed in the early 1800s as the small city of New York began to grow out of the small tip south of even Tribeca. A polluted infested pond in the area was drained into a canal where canal street now stands. The area soon filled up with small modest Federal, and Greek revival homes (making the area similar to Alexandria VA, or even parts of Greenwich Village) .

Around 1850 though, things began to change. As the industrial age gained steam, New York began to swell in size, and downtown began to grow up the island. Businesses built new buildings and factories in Soho, and The residents began to leave until the area was predominantly commercial and industrial in the 1870s. During this time Businesses of many types ranging from shops to hotels to merchant warehouses and factories came into the area.

These new buildings pioneered architecture and design of the modern building, with the use of the new American innovation, cast iron. Cast Iron was quickly mass produced by molding designs out of cast Iron, which was much quicker and cheaper than carving something out of stone or wood. The molded pieces were then sent to the construction site of the building where they were assembled together. Since the designs were still just as beautiful as regular stone or wood, they were sometimes constructed or adapted to the front of a building. These "iron fronts" were constructed all over the world, especially in England, Australia, NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Richmond. New York had by far the most of all (over 250 constructed in the mid 1800s), and the Majority of them were located in Soho. These structures were built in the popular Italianate style, or Second Empire if they had a mansard roof on top of them. These new structures can be considered the first skyscrapers as they contained earlyelevators, and a skeletal frame.

Cast Iron Design

By 1900 Soho had become a major textile factory district where people of all ages toiled in brutal conditions. Eventually the area began to go into decline as development moved to downtown, and midtown. By the mid 20th century, even the textile industry moved south. The 1950s were the worst time in Soho's History. The area had become an industrial wasteland, of empty warehouses, sweatshops known as Hell's 100 acres. Even a few buildings were ignorantly torn down for things as ridiculous as gas stations, and parking lots. The worst came in the 1960s when the planner Robert Moses wanted to build an expressway through Soho and bulldoze the entire area.


Thankfully by some great miracle, the urbanist Jane Jakobs was able to get the city council to vote against it. Even better than that, the neighborhood experienced gentrification in the late sixties as many artists came back into the city and bought up abandoned floors for art studios because of the amount of room they had. Even though this was illegal (due to the non residential zoning laws), the financially desperate city let artists use the structures. Finally in the early 1970s, the city (legally) permitted the use of joint living-art spaces in new more urban friendly zoning codes.


In the early 1980s, with the affordable loft law, the city let non artist residents finally live in Soho, and the popularity of the neighborhood soared The area began to attract the best clubs and finest boutiques in all of New York City. Although some of the artists left, many of the greatest artists have stayed, and many new galleries opened.

Today Soho is arguably the greatest and by far the most eccentric neighborhoods in New York. A single loft costs just as much as a Brownstone, and the whole neighborhood is crawling with tourists and artists in one of the greatest urban paradises in the whole world. The Soho effect, also known as gentrification, has brought new life to almost every single city in the united states as people find themselves bored with the quiet aesthetically defective, inefficient suburbs. Old buildings of all types can now be re purposed thanks to the 1998 historic tax credits, and the trend of urbanization has been reversed, in part because of the artists who wanted to work in Soho.

The Soho Historic district was established in 1973, and became a historic landmark in 1978. It contain 26 blocks and was expanded in 2010. The main roads include Broadway, Houston, Canal, Broome, and Greene streets. In 2005, the city allowed structures to be built in the empty parking lots, and now, few remain.

There are many well known buildings in Soho. Perhaps the best known are below.

The E.V. Haugwout building is by far the most famous building in Soho. Built in 1857 by John P Gaynor, it was one of the first cast iron buildings in Soho. What makes it very famous is its architectural beauty, and the fact that the worlds first elevator was built for the original occupiers, the E.V. Haugwout porcelain factory, who needed a way to transport delicate objects from floor to floor. The Structure itself was based off of the Sansovino Library in Venice.

Two other very famous structures are the King and Queen of Greene Street, who both wear huge crowning cornices. The 1873 buildings were designed by Isaac Duckworth and built in the Second Empire style, and proved that cast iron architecture could be beautifully and heavily ornamented.

King of Greene Street

Queen of Greene Street

Along with Italianate originated and Second empire Baroque related structures, there were a few Art Nouveau, and Chicago-classical structures in Soho, such as the following three.

The Roosevelt building, which was built for the same family of Theodore Roosevelt was completed in 1873. The Art Nouveau building was designed by The famous Richard Morris Hunt.



The Art Nouveau Little Singer Building was designed by Earnest Flagg and completed in 1904 (built for Singer sewing) It was considered little because of the larger Second Empire 1908 Singer Building, which was the tallest building in the world. Sadly though, the 1908 structure was demolished only 60 years later.

Little Singer Building

Big Singer Building

The Silk Exchange building which was diagonal from the E.V. Haugwout building was a Chicago styled building built in 1896. Although it was not all that well known, it makes an impression in Soho.

Lastly, Soho is currently the home of the hottest and newest fashions along with the beautiful art and architecture.

Musee D' Orsay

The Musee D Orsay was one of the the most ornamented (former) Train Stations to ever stand, and contains possibly the greatest collection of Impressionist work, including artists Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Gustave Courbet. The Musee D Orsay Is an impressive example of Beaux Arts.

The Station was originally the site of the Palais D Orsay, Which was completed in 1838 and was used for the Court of Accounts, and the State Council, until the structure was burnt in an 1871 civilian upheaval and civil war. For 30 years, the area remained in ruin as a reminder of the horrors of the war, until the late 1890s. In 1897, the French Government ceded the land to the Orleans Railway Company, who originally had a disadvantaged station further outside of the city center at the Gare d Austerlitz. The railway company hired architect Victor Laloux. Who designed the Beaux Arts Train Station in 1898. The station (Gare d Orsay)included a hotel, which wrapped around the metal awning of the station. They were completed in time for the 1900 worlds fair. The stone, from Charente, and Poitou, blended in well with its neighbors. The Station (which was very high tech) was the first Electric train station, contained ramps and elevators for people and luggage, and 16 extra underground tracks. The main terminal was about 105 feet (32 Meters) high, 131 feet (40 meters) wide, and 453 feet (138 meters) long. The Gare d Orsay, which was the only station in the center of Paris, served trains traveling on South Western French lines until 1939, when the Gare d Orsay served only the suburban rail due to the platforms being too short for modern trains. The hotel welcomed many of the guests who traveled to Paris until 1971 even though the station closed many years earlier. The Station itself was used as a mailing center in WWII by the Germans, and later the scene for many movies. The station was designated as a historic landmark in 1973 due to threats to build a hideous looking modern hotel complex, and in 1977 planning of the Musee D Orsay began.

The Musee d Orsay opened in late 1986, and is a stunning work of postmodernism, which was designed by the ACT Architecture group, fits the train station very well. The design makes the terminal the center of the museum, splits the museum up into 3 levels, and contains 2 viewing towers in the back of the station (where this photo was taken from). On Average, the museum receives about 3 million visitors a year, and has received over 60 million since its opening. The Art itself is all from the impressionist period from 1848 to 1850. The building was recently renovated in 2009-11. Lastly, the art and the building interact very well as they are both works of art.

Details:

The glass clock, surrounded by Beaus Arts Quoins, ornamentation, and the words Paris Orleans.

The Detailed crowning on the side which faces Le Sine

The Well ornamented clock in the Main Hall.

The Entrance to the museum

Skyscrapers and The Zoning Law of 1916

Skyscrapers have become probably the greatest technological advancement in the modern era of Architecture, especially urban architecture over the past dozen decades or so since they were invented. Around the 1880s and 1890s when the skyscraper was invented, they were of great need to all cities across America, and most parts of the globe, as these urban areas were becoming denser and denser due to five or six story height limits. Conditions became worse and worse, especially in New York and Chicago where the slums just kept getting packed and more packed with people. Then in the 1880s as the post-Civil war industrial revolution chugged on, a new method of designing buildings was invented and used on a few buildings, such as the ones below, which involved A steel frame and allowed the buildings to be built upward into the sky, coining the name skyscraper.

The 1885 Home Insurance Building. It was considered the worlds first skyscraper (Demolished 1931)

New York's First Skyscraper, the tower building 1889. The structure led to the growth of taller structures along Broadway, and led ultimately to its dismantling in 1905.

The 1887 Gallatin Bank Building (Demolished in the 1920s)

Most cities have always had some type of height limit, originally to keep a building from falling down until the late 1800s. After a couple of decades of building skyscrapers, people realized that they stole light from the street, and zoning laws sprung up in places like Chicago, which had a 200 foot height limit. Ultimately, this kept many cities from growing upward and no new feats of height were reached in cities.....Except New York City whose structures topped each other out year after year in a giddy rise to the top, reflecting the speed at which the city itself was growing.

The 1908 Singer building (Demolished in 1968)

The 1909 Met life tower

The 1913 Woolworth building

During this time. many of the canyons of wall street were built as Buildings crept higher and higher with no end in sight. But all of this changed in 1915-16 with the completion of the Equitable Building near wall street.

The structure (as many New Yorkers said) robbed the street of light and air, therefore the city felt that they needed to zone the ever growing skyscrapers of New York. They could not easily just put a cap on the height limit, and end the excitement of building taller and taller, so instead, They introduced a new zoning policy. The structure would have to be stepped back at about the 16-20th story to permit light to enter the street. But instead of just capping the structure off with a pyramid, the building would be permitted to go as high as technology allowed once the size of the floors was less than 25% of the footprint of the ground level. Many new Ideas came about showing how to

design buildings with the new regulation, as shown in this 1922 drawing.

The new laws soon changed the appearance of the modern skyscraper of the 1920s in cities besides New York. As the decade "roared on" The New style of art-deco promoted "wedding cake" styled setbacks in many structures. Most of the gleaming giants in cities built at the peak of the stock market in 1929 had countless setbacks gleaming with many patterns, which reflected the times. Most of Americas famous urban skyscrapers were built during this time.

Some Famous examples are down below.

The 1924 American Radiator Building

The 1931 Empire State Building

The 1930 Chrysler building

Looking back, The 1916 zoning laws were an innovative way to overcome the challenge of height and letting in light. The zoning laws even promoted the art deco step backs which have since been embedded in the stereotypical image of the skyscraper. Even though the zoning laws were eventually lifted after WWII and the coming of the soulless glass box, step backs remain a major part of the postmodern and current structures of today.

Old Photos from The Architectural Record Book: Skyscraper, The search for the American Style 1891-1941.

Italianate Collection II

The Italianate Architectural style, which was based off of the Italian Renascence, originated in England, and was popularized by Alexander Jackson Davis in the United States. The style which was popular between 1830 and about 1885-90 was part of the picturesque movement which was a backlash and Reaction to formalism (strict adhering of traditional architectural rules). The Style can be found in many Commercial districts and main streets in the Western World as the style was very popular in the 1800s. The Style is known for having wooden, and Cast Iron Ornament strung and latched on all over the facade, including Detailed cornices, Brackets, Arched sash windows and doors, Cast Iron porches, and were usually made up of brick or wood. These structures are in New York, Richmond VA, and Staunton VA.

New York NY

The EV Haugwout Building (look for future post)

Richmond VA

Staunton VA