80t. 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
Built in 1890 and designed by Richard Berger, 112-114 Prince Street is one of the last buildings in SoHo constructed with a complete cast-iron façade. (According to Margot Gayle, 550 Broadway, completed in 1895, is the city's last. No picture, sorry.) Christopher Gray called it "...nothing special, just a typically ornate SoHo cast-iron facade..." which sounds damning only if you discount the amazingly high quality of SoHo cast-irons--are there any boring or bad ones in the neighborhood? Does it even make sense to say there are, given how cumulative their effect is?
What makes the building stand out from the others, though, isn't its façade but its simulated continuation on a formerly blank wall by the artist Richard Haas. The 1975 mural has some rep as a local landmark, and when it was in better shape (something like this), I'm pretty sure it fooled me at least once. But I think it's too gimmicky a gesture, and it loses its charm once the initial shock is lost. Its historical grasp is a little tenuous as well. To incorporate two existing windows into the mural, Haas painted several bays narrower than the others, creating a vertical asymmetry I don't think any 19th century architect would allow in a ground-up design. And I can't think of any non-street, non-entrance building side in SoHo that receives the level of architectural treatment the mural depicts. There were practical reasons architects left them blank back in the day. After all, why add a lot of decorative doo-dads when they might get compromised or destroyed by a new neighboring building? Cast-iron façades also gained value from their relationships to sidewalk filled with consumers peering into wide store windows, or walking in and out of dramatic, kingly entrances. Cast-irons are grand because they had beauty and utility; in contrast, this mural is corny.
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
Built in 1890 and designed by Richard Berger, 112-114 Prince Street is one of the last buildings in SoHo constructed with a complete cast-iron façade. (According to Margot Gayle, 550 Broadway, completed in 1895, is the city's last. No picture, sorry.) Christopher Gray called it "...nothing special, just a typically ornate SoHo cast-iron facade..." which sounds damning only if you discount the amazingly high quality of SoHo cast-irons--are there any boring or bad ones in the neighborhood? Does it even make sense to say there are, given how cumulative their effect is?
What makes the building stand out from the others, though, isn't its façade but its simulated continuation on a formerly blank wall by the artist Richard Haas. The 1975 mural has some rep as a local landmark, and when it was in better shape (something like this), I'm pretty sure it fooled me at least once. But I think it's too gimmicky a gesture, and it loses its charm once the initial shock is lost. Its historical grasp is a little tenuous as well. To incorporate two existing windows into the mural, Haas painted several bays narrower than the others, creating a vertical asymmetry I don't think any 19th century architect would allow in a ground-up design. And I can't think of any non-street, non-entrance building side in SoHo that receives the level of architectural treatment the mural depicts. There were practical reasons architects left them blank back in the day. After all, why add a lot of decorative doo-dads when they might get compromised or destroyed by a new neighboring building? Cast-iron façades also gained value from their relationships to sidewalk filled with consumers peering into wide store windows, or walking in and out of dramatic, kingly entrances. Cast-irons are grand because they had beauty and utility; in contrast, this mural is corny.
Labels: Cast-Iron, Richard Berger, Richard Haas, SoHo
posted by Michael at
11:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home