80g. SoHo Historic District

A.K.A.: SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District
Location: roughly bounded by West Broadway, Houston, Crosby, and Canal Streets
Built: from early 1800s to today; most cast-irons date from 1870s
Architects: multiple
National Register Number: 78001883
Listed: June 29, 1978
Visited: June 21, 24, and 26, 2008
Additional Information: LPC Landmark Designation Report



The New York Times, 1875:

We certainly owe it to the well=known house of [D.] Appleton & Co. that it is now possible to get American books which, in respect to typography, paper, and illustrations, are in all respects equal to the best works turned out from British houses...It is the simple truth to say that no American firm could, or at any rate did, attempt to rival the best works of both London and Edinburgh till within the past ten years. In that period there has been an immense advance in American printing, and no house has done more in this forward movement than that of [D.] Appleton & Co."

(An aside: when did it become redundant to assert American quality in this fashion? When--if ever--will we stop affecting surprise when China or India equals or excels in something we Americans assume America is the best at?)

So, D. Appleton & Co. Along with limitless vistas of the forgotten, they were responsible for the memoirs of Matthew C. Perry, William Tecumseh Sherman, and William H. Seward; and, heading the charge for native intellectual respectability, served as the American publishers of such eminent Victorians as Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Lyell, and--most monumentally--Charles Darwin. The evidence allows for no easy conclusion, but their neo-Renaissance office at 443-445 Broadway (Griffith Thomas, 1860) may be where On the Origin of Species was first published in the United States. It is a handsome focal point for in an intellectual revolution.



I might as well explain why I haven't talked about SoHo's cast-irons yet. I'm covering structures in rough chronological order, from the surviving Greek Revivals to the 21st century invading species; we're at about the early 1860s and the most interesting cast-irons come a touch later. (The exception is what's maybe the most famous thing in all of SoHo, E.V.Haughwout Building of 1857, but as it was landmarked separately, it'll be covered separately.) 18 Mercer (John Kellum, 1861) is an interesting cast-iron from this time, perhaps only for accidental reasons: a mossy green in contrast to the white and ivories throughout SoHo, and stripped of nearly all its ornament (no column bases, and only two capitals left), it is an unwitting precursor to Ian Schrager's 40 Bond Street. A shame about the hideous tacked-on sixth floor, though.