About the SoHo and the Cast Iron District Walk in New York
Since the 19th century, the neighborhood of SoHo (south of Houston) has housed the city’s upper class, its first red light district, luxury textile industries, some of the country’s most influential Modernist artists, and today, an array of hip, cutting edge boutiques and galleries. Probably the most prominent visible remnant of SoHo’s early bygone era is its stunning collection of cast iron architecture. This three hour walking tour in the company of a practicing architect or architectural historian uses these buildings and their various iterations as a textbook for examining the neighborhood’s rich two hundred year history as a creative and trendsetting catalyst in New York City.
Our walk starts on Greene Street with a discussion of the beginnings of the high end textile industry in the 1840’s that employed the technology of cast iron architecture. Examining both the ornamental detail and the overall structure of these buildings, we discover the pros and cons of cast iron as buildi
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Since the 19th century, the neighborhood of SoHo (south of Houston) has housed the city’s upper class, its first red light district, luxury textile industries, some of the country’s most influential Modernist artists, and today, an array of hip, cutting edge boutiques and galleries. Probably the most prominent visible remnant of SoHo’s early bygone era is its stunning collection of cast iron architecture. This three hour walking tour in the company of a practicing architect or architectural historian uses these buildings and their various iterations as a textbook for examining the neighborhood’s rich two hundred year history as a creative and trendsetting catalyst in New York City.
Our walk starts on Greene Street with a discussion of the beginnings of the high end textile industry in the 1840’s that employed the technology of cast iron architecture. Examining both the ornamental detail and the overall structure of these buildings, we discover the pros and cons of cast iron as building material, and why its use in construction was so short-lived.
As we move across Spring St, we pass the former studios of such notable artists as Donald Judd, Phillip Glass and Twyla Tharp, whose occupation of these industrial spaces saved them from demolition in the 1960s. Along the way we visit a number of art galleries and boutiques which feature some of the most innovative retail interiors in Manhattan.
Finally on Broadway we consider the rise of the department store in SoHo in recent years. And we finish our walk in the shadow of the most famous and grand of all the cast iron buildings, the E.V. Haughwout Building and its neighbor, the Little Singer Building.
