80s. 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



In 1892 Moses King called 549-555 Broadway (Alfred Zucker, 1890) "...the tallest mercantile building of the longest, most varied and most interesting avenues in the world." "This store of stores is 75 by 200 feet in area, and has twelve floors, each floor being equal to six city stores of 25 by 100 feet, making 72 stores of large size in one building." Contemporary department stores are bigger than 180K square feet as a matter of course, but in its day it was described as "...the great curiosity shop of America," filled with "...almost everything that could be though of for the ornamentation of a mansion or the recreation or amusement of its occupants..."



The man behind the store, Charles Broadway Rouss, was as outsized as his creation. He made some money in retail back in Virginia, fought in the Civil War, lost the money, moved to New York, made some money, lost it all again, spent time in debtor's prison, then made some real fucking money. During the store's construction in 1889, a sign was placed on the site that celebrated Rouss' triumph at reaching a third act in life:

"He who builds, owns and will occupy this marvel of brick, iron and granite, thirteen years ago walked these streets penniless and $50,000 in debt. Only to prove that the capitalists of to-day were poor men twenty years ago, and that many a fellow facing poverty to-day may be a capitalist a quarter of a century hence, if he will. Pluck, adorned with ambition, backed by honor bright, will always command success, even without the almighty dollar."

Some of the architecture guides that quote it--and how could one resist from quoting it?--neglect to mention that it was written in an aggressively non-standard English, as Rouss was a partisan for phonetic spelling, even going so far as to publish a monthly industry journal with it. Then he went blind. In an unsettling detail, Rouss paid another blind man a dollar a day to undergo treatments (one account says it was from at least 180 doctors) to see what, if anything, worked. Nothing did.



A few years before he died in 1902, he expanded the building by about 25 feet to the north. Christopher Gray says the two triangular dormers were added perhaps because Rouss could feel them easily on an architectural model, an observation which makes a lot of intuitive sense; he also adds that the "...meeting point between the original building and the addition is evident to the careful observer..." which I admit I don't see, possibly thanks to a careful restoration a few years ago that also simplified its color scheme from one with all manner of pinks and buffs to a glistening beige. Floodlights were also added to the façade, giving it some show-stopping, attention-grabbing drama; even if Rouss couldn't see them, he'd understand them.