80r. 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; August 8 and 31, 2008
Additional Information: LPC Landmark Designation Report
Apart from its long stretch of ten whole bays stretching down Greene Street, 109-111 Prince Street's most striking feature is its chamfered corner. A little bit of real estate surrendered to the sidewalk pays back dividends in drama: an entire side of a building dedicated to your grand entrance.
Jarvis Morgan Slade designed it. He died at 30, only two months after construction began in 1883. A fucking bummer to think about, for two rather different reasons: he was robbed of the chance of producing more and doing better than he did--and yet even with seven years fewer years than my own time on earth, Slade still managed to made his mark on the Manhattan so much more permanently and effectively. (Are there 30-year-old architects in the city building big today?)
I feel guilty that I keep going back to initial circa '93-'94 memories of SoHo, but when the Replay here was the Replay Country Store it was an alluringly shopgasmic experience. As its name suggests, its organizing theme was "the West", an already a series of clichés without connection to the lived experience to most Americans but oversimplified yet again by European sensibility. In other words, it was false and silly and yet...and it was perhaps the closest thing I know to what all the old retail emporiums of 19th century must've been like, a valiant attempt at getting everything under one roof. There were stacks of wearables everywhere; the walls were as bric-a-bracked-out with old kitsch as a T.G.I. Friday's. When you were finished exploring one floor, there was another. It seemed endless. It seemed like everything was on sale. There was no way to handle it. I could never concentrate enough to even begin to decide what to buy. Yeah, it didn't last. I went again last year. They cleared everything out, surely years ago; got rid of all the complexity, surface overwhelming purchasable items. It seemed creepy and sterile, smaller.
(Conflict of interest alert: I've worked with the principals of the firm behind 109's 1993 renovation when my firm teamed up for a few project proposals we didn't win, IIRC.)
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; August 8 and 31, 2008
Additional Information: LPC Landmark Designation Report
Apart from its long stretch of ten whole bays stretching down Greene Street, 109-111 Prince Street's most striking feature is its chamfered corner. A little bit of real estate surrendered to the sidewalk pays back dividends in drama: an entire side of a building dedicated to your grand entrance.
Jarvis Morgan Slade designed it. He died at 30, only two months after construction began in 1883. A fucking bummer to think about, for two rather different reasons: he was robbed of the chance of producing more and doing better than he did--and yet even with seven years fewer years than my own time on earth, Slade still managed to made his mark on the Manhattan so much more permanently and effectively. (Are there 30-year-old architects in the city building big today?)
I feel guilty that I keep going back to initial circa '93-'94 memories of SoHo, but when the Replay here was the Replay Country Store it was an alluringly shopgasmic experience. As its name suggests, its organizing theme was "the West", an already a series of clichés without connection to the lived experience to most Americans but oversimplified yet again by European sensibility. In other words, it was false and silly and yet...and it was perhaps the closest thing I know to what all the old retail emporiums of 19th century must've been like, a valiant attempt at getting everything under one roof. There were stacks of wearables everywhere; the walls were as bric-a-bracked-out with old kitsch as a T.G.I. Friday's. When you were finished exploring one floor, there was another. It seemed endless. It seemed like everything was on sale. There was no way to handle it. I could never concentrate enough to even begin to decide what to buy. Yeah, it didn't last. I went again last year. They cleared everything out, surely years ago; got rid of all the complexity, surface overwhelming purchasable items. It seemed creepy and sterile, smaller.
(Conflict of interest alert: I've worked with the principals of the firm behind 109's 1993 renovation when my firm teamed up for a few project proposals we didn't win, IIRC.)
Labels: Cast-Iron, Jarvis Morgan Slade, SoHo
posted by Michael at
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