SoHo/Broome Street

SoHo

Wandering through SoHo today, it is difficult to imagine the neighborhood which, in the early 20th century, was the site of so many fires it earned the nickname "Hell's Hundred Acres." The district today is, of course, one of the most expensive and desirable neighborhoods in all of New York, home to expensive retail and upscale galleries, a far cry from the blighted slum that was slated to be the future site of the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOWMEX) back in the early 60's.

The battle for what would become SoHo and the defeat of LOMEX was, in many ways, the end of an era. The fight over LOMEX would be Robert Moses and Jane Jacob's final public battle before he was removed from power and she permanently decamped for Toronto. The creation of the SoHo Cast-Iron Historic District in the early 1970's was also an early victory for the nascent historic preservation movement. While few today would defend Moses' plan to push an expressway through Lower Manhattan, SoHo is nonetheless a case study in the cost of historic preservation. SoHo's iconic cast-irons, once home to a range of people and enterprises are now the exclusive domain of the wealthy and elite, and while the neighborhood is undeniably beautiful and quintessentially New York, the Parisian-like attention to preservation can make the area feel more like a specimen under a cloche than a living thing.

SoHo Cast-Irons

Physically SoHo is made up primarily of five-plus story buildings, with storefronts at street level and apartments above, many of which sport stone and cast-iron stoops. The sidewalks are wide and, in stark contrast to neighboring Chinatown and Little Italy, almost completely devoid of carts, stalls, or vestibules of any kind. Trees are very rare (hardly an anomaly given that this is Lower Manhattan). Walking East from Sixth Avenue the neighborhood remains fairly uniform in density until it's Eastern boundary at Broadway where the buildings assume an all-together larger scale. The majority of SoHo's cast-irons can be found along Greene and Mercer streets, which run North-South from Houston to Canal through the district's center.

SoHo Streetscapes

Also of note is the district's many Romanesque buildings, most of which are contemporaneous with its cast-iron structures.

Note the rounded arches

To close out this entry I want to focus on one street in particular: Broome Street.

Broome Street

Broome Street has some very nice buildings, however, it is especially significant because it was slated to be the path for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and consequently would have been completely obliterated had the project gone forward. Broome runs all the way from SoHo to the Lower Eastside by way of Little Italy, where it is home to the San Lorenzo Ruiz Chapel (formerly the Church of the Most Holy Crucifix).

San Lorenzo Ruiz

While this modest romanesque church is architecturally unremarkable it is nonetheless significant as it was one of the major planning/rally points for the battle against LOMEX. Father Gerard La Mountain, who became the Church's pastor in 1960, was an significant figure in campaign against the expressway and was instrumental in persuading Jane Jacobs to join the fight. Following the defeat of LOMAX the two planted a tree out in front of the church, which stands to this day.