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S01E04 REAL GONE – “The Artistic Colonization of SoHo”
205 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we veer away from discussing musicians almost entirely and focus on the establishment of the area south of Houston Street known as SoHo as the centre of habitation for other artists living in the City in the early 1970s. We discuss how the physical features of the abandoned industrial loft buildings made it attractive for artists to live and work in this Downtown neighbourhood, and how the influx of galleries (both commercial and co-operative) shifted the centre of the New York Artworld from Midtown to SoHo. The consolidation of artists in the area helped create a new politicised community that managed to spearhead opposition to the Lower Manhattan Expressway project, saving a large section of Downtown Manhattan from destruction and economic abandonment, in doing so preserving the area’s architecture and cultural importance for decades to come.
Books
Aaron Shkuda - “The Lofts of SoHo: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950-1980” (2016)
Sharon Zukin – “Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change” (1989)
Jane Jacobs – “The Death & Life of Great American Cities” (1961)
Songs
Meredith Monk – “Education of the Girlchild: The Tale” / “Fear & Loathing in Gotham: Gotham Lullaby” (Dolmen Music - 1981)
EMCK
Recommended
Transcript
Soho's Transformation into an Artist Hub
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode four of Real Gone. In this episode we're going to veer away from discussing music almost entirely and focus on the establishment of the area south of Houston Street known as Soho as the center of habitation for other artists living in the city in the early 1970s.
00:00:15
Speaker
We'll discuss how the physical features of the abandoned industrial loft buildings made it attractive for artists to live and work in this downtown neighbourhood, and how the influx of art galleries, both commercial and cooperative, shifted the centre of the New York art world from midtown to Soho.
00:00:30
Speaker
The consolidation of artists in the area helped create a new politicised community that managed to spearhead opposition to the Lower Manhattan Expressway project, saving a large section of downtown Manhattan from destruction and economic abandonment, and in doing so, preserving the area's cultural importance for decades to come.
00:00:56
Speaker
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Preservation Efforts and Community Spirit in Soho
00:01:10
Speaker
Ha!
00:01:20
Speaker
Buying and renting space in Soho on the surrounding areas around 1970 was relatively cheap. The founding member of Fluxus, George Machunas, had been resident in Soho since 1965 when he emigrated from his native Lithuania. His Fluxhouse Cooperatives operation functioned as a property acquisition project that had, from 1966 onwards,
00:01:41
Speaker
acquired over 20 lofts and houses for artists and arts centres, with supportive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and donations from charitable patrons, the J.M. Kaplan Foundation. These abandoned lofts and buildings were bought mostly from failing manufacturing companies or their absentee landlords and were envisaged by Machunas as spaces for habitation and creation by artists working across a range of media.
00:02:05
Speaker
This vision was largely in opposition to the prevailing zoning law, which dictated that Soho was a known residential area. The feeler of industry in the area had enabled civic planners like Robert Moses to push for the creation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which, if implemented, would have obliterated much of Lower Manhattan's Loft District.
00:02:25
Speaker
The efforts of Machunas and loft artists resident in the area deserved to be credited as it was their opposition to the expressway, which swung the balance towards the city's decision to leave the loft district undisturbed. Soho then became a fertile breeding ground for much of the creative artistry that flourished in Manhattan through the 1970s.
00:02:44
Speaker
As we mentioned in an earlier episode, the artistic renaissance of Soho and the adjacent neighbourhoods of Noho and Tribeca in the 1970s and beyond had its roots in the urban crisis which New York faced, along with other American cities in the post-war years, where de-industrialisation, suburbanisation and the failures of urban renewal had created a desolate landscape.
00:03:06
Speaker
Soho's industrial decline was rooted in specific industries such as rag and waste paper recycling, warehousing and light manufacturing, which were in a state of decline as well as a general unsuitability of loft buildings for modern industry. The industrialization in Soho had created a dense collection of vacant loft buildings close to the amenities of Greenwich Village, Little Italy and Chinatown. These nearby residential neighbourhoods made living in Soho more attractive than taking up residence in an isolated standalone district.
00:03:37
Speaker
The transformation of Soho began in the late 1950s when painters, sculptors, musicians and other mixed media artists began moving to the neighbourhood's vacant industrial loft buildings. The best known was minimalist sculptor Donald Judd who owned an entire building on Prince Street.
00:03:53
Speaker
Other art world luminaries included Alex Katz. By the early 1960s, there was a significant artistic community living in Soho. By 1968, artists occupied well over 200 lofts in the 12-block area south of Howson Street.
00:04:09
Speaker
The Soho artists' community had grown in unison with the flourishing art scene in New York City following the end of World War II. In the late 1940s, the avant-garde had developed around abstract expressionism, which broke formal traditions and helped shift the cultural centre of the West from Paris to New York. The ascendancy of New York art was rooted in the growth of the United States as a superpower in the post-war era.
Growth of the Artistic Community in New York
00:04:33
Speaker
The growing ubiquity of paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, together with the grand colour-filled canvases of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, reflected the standing of the United States as the most powerful nation in the world. This art was deeply rooted in New York City. New York's cultural hegemony as a centre for artistic experimentation was maintained in the 1950s with the assistance of commercial and cooperative galleries, curators and art schools.
00:04:59
Speaker
A thriving art scene had developed around 10th Street in Greenwich Village. Artists congregated in the Cedar Tavern, showing their work at galleries in the surrounding neighbourhood. Museums displaying abstract art and modern art also thrived. The Guggenheim Museum's iconic Frank Lloyd Wright design building on the Upper East Side opened in 1959. Donald Judd and Andy Warhol maintained this successful artistic innovation throughout the 1960s.
00:05:28
Speaker
Residing in Soho allowed artists to live cheaply but close to Greenwich Village, the hub for artistic activity. Large, open interior spaces and loft buildings were particularly attractive to artists. These spaces were perfect for storing the outsized pieces that New York artists were producing in the 1960s and 1970s. Ample windows provided natural light, and the open floor plans and 16-foot ceilings gave painters, sculptors and dancers space to work.
00:05:55
Speaker
Although these were industrial buildings, the cast iron facades were aesthetically beautiful and distinctly urban for those seeking to establish their home in the heart of the city. When businesses such as cloth manufacturers and paper recycling companies went into decline, the owners of those businesses, who often owned the building they operated from, rented or sold unused loft space to artists. This occurred most frequently in the northwest section of Soho, near West Broadway and Green Street, where lofts were smaller and industrial vacancies higher.
00:06:24
Speaker
Financial constraints and the need for large, flexible studios led many artists to convert their lofts into combined living and workspaces. Garment manufacturers, machine shops and plastics warehousing concerns were abandoning these late 19th century structures due to their insufficiency for modern, commercial and industrial requirements. Others were simply going out of business in the tense post-war economy. Many artists moving to Soho were educated from economically stable financial backgrounds.
00:06:54
Speaker
Most knew enough about New York to transform their loft into a functional residence and many new other residents in the area. Those attending local art schools and colleges gained knowledge about the secrets of Soho. Many artists did however have to support themselves through additional jobs, often by way of teaching in local YMCA's public schools and art classes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other such venues. Loft owner Barbara Haskell was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
00:07:21
Speaker
Painter and photographer Hirotsugu Aoki, who owned a co-op at 132 Green Street, worked on his art, while his wife, Tris O'Connor, worked as an English professor at the City College of New York. Aoki eventually became a special effects supervisor working on films such as Back to the Future. Composer Philip Glass worked in his cousin's plumbing business before his career took off.
00:07:43
Speaker
and operated a removals company with his friend Steve Reich named Chelsea Light Moving while both were launching their career as modern classical composers. Loft living in Soho was illegal and contravened zoning legislation facing the threat of eviction.
00:07:58
Speaker
artists organised politically to defend their right to live in the area. As a result, they created innovative arguments about the role of arts in society and the place of creativity in the austere post-war economy. Loft living, they argued, was to be encouraged and legalised because it allowed for the growth of communities whose cultural products gave the city a new identity and drove a new urban economy.
00:08:21
Speaker
City leaders began to take artists' demands more seriously and enacted policies that enabled them to live legally in Soho. In 1961, a series of fires and loft buildings led to widespread inspections by the New York City Fire Department and threats of eviction for many. In response, artists from and around Soho formed the Artists Tenants Association, or the ETA, to advocate for their right to live legally in these industrial lofts.
00:08:51
Speaker
In 1964, an ATA-led strike and march on City Hall prompted Mayor Robert Wagner to create the Artists in Residence AIR program. This was the city's first policy to protect artists living in lofts from eviction. The ATA worked with city and state officials to amend building and zoning codes to facilitate loft residences.
00:09:12
Speaker
A low Soho residence comprised the majority of artists who converted lofts into residential properties. The ETA membership included artists from Midtown, Greenwich Village and other parts of downtown Manhattan. The ETA also worked to rebrand the image of loft dwellers from subversive outsiders
00:09:30
Speaker
to hard-working, family-orientated contributors to the New York's economic and cultural lifeblood. The ATA were savvy in their approach, enlisting vocal support from well-renowned public figures who portrayed themselves as patrons of the arts, such as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
00:09:45
Speaker
Mrs. Roosevelt spoke passionately on behalf of the artists and decried bureaucratic policies that would see them evicted from their homes. These celebrity endorsements added significant credibility to the ETA's membership and gave them added political clout. The 1964 artist strike was intended to demonstrate the Soho artists' influence on the more economically powerful actors in the art world, namely the commercial galleries.
Legal and Economic Challenges for Artists
00:10:10
Speaker
The ETA requested that its artist members not take part in any public artistic activity in New York, including exhibiting art appearing on public TV or radio. It encouraged members not to send any art to commercial galleries in New York for sale, and likewise asked galleries to refuse the sale of New York art outside the city, thus depriving New York City of the revenue generated by the sales of local artworks.
00:10:33
Speaker
The outcome of the AIR programme demonstrated that this type of collective political action would be effective for the Soho artists, although Guillains were incremental.
00:10:44
Speaker
In the late 1960s, artists began buying entire buildings in Soho through cooperatives. Members of co-op still faced potential eviction due to the illegality of residing in space zoned as industrial. However, ownership of the building meant that artist owners would retain a commercial asset, even if this was far from a safe investment, and even if raising finance in such a building was problematic.
00:11:07
Speaker
Ownership of loft buildings through cooperatives meant that artists could retain the benefit of alterations and improvements they made to the spaces they occupied. Members share in the cooperative would usually entitle them to occupy one or more units in the building, and members would then take collective responsibility for maintenance of the building. This model fit with the ethos of the close-knit artistic community in Soho. A strong unified spirit began to pervade the area, the Spring Street bar becoming a social hub.
00:11:34
Speaker
The Soho artists' community developed a philosophy that stemmed from the counterculture of the 1960s. People turned factories into homes, then opened galleries and new businesses where there had been none before. There was an anti-administration feeling. The risk being taken by artists who had moved their families into the loft buildings and invested capital in carrying out renovations was offset by the artists' belief that there was such a critical mass of people living in the lofts the city would never evict them en masse.
00:12:03
Speaker
This safety in numbers approach did turn out to be well-founded and influenced others in the surrounding neighborhoods of what would become known as Tribeca and Noho to adopt a similar approach. The illegality of Loft Homes meant it was nearly impossible to obtain traditional mortgage loan financing. The cooperatives gave artists the opportunity to pool their collective resources.
00:12:25
Speaker
This method of securing occupation would accelerate in the 1960s and the most influential figure behind this strategy was George Machunas. George Machunas was a Lithuanian immigrant who obtained a BA in architecture and design from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1954. He returned to New York and immersed himself in the local art world, taking architectural classes at the new school while working in architectural firms.
00:12:53
Speaker
While studying at the New School, machinists met other artists including Lamont Young, George Brecht and Alan Krapow, who were interested in performance art across multiple disciplines. Machinists coined the term Fluxus for their new international avant-garde movement, which fused elements of data and other art movements.
00:13:12
Speaker
Their focus was on transforming the mundanity of daily life into art, and by doing so they intended to express the idea that any person could be and should be an artist, and that artistic expression and its enjoyment should not be the exclusive reserve of an educated upper class.
00:13:29
Speaker
Machunas turned his attention to the problem of sourcing housing for artists to live and work in. In 1963, he developed his Flux House plan to provide space for artists by renovating industrial lofts in Soho. He planned to organise not-for-profit cooperatives for artists, ran adverts and local papers to attract investors, people willing to share in the cost of acquisition and renovation.
00:13:54
Speaker
Machunas faced obstacles. Living in Soho was illegal and although he claimed he would work to change the state and city regulations to rectify this problem, legalization would not come for decades. Furthermore, real estate syndication laws required that to offer shares in a cooperative, the organizer and the sponsor had to prepare documents including a cooperative offering plan, a copy of the bylaws and a proprietary release along with other financial details and send these to the New York State Attorney General for approval
00:14:24
Speaker
The approval process would then generally take up to one year to be processed. It may come as no surprise to hear that Machunas did not adhere to many of these legal obligations. He was unprepared to wait the length of time that would have been necessary for legal sanction. Instead, he falsely organized the buildings as agricultural cooperatives.
00:14:43
Speaker
which were easier to establish as cooperative residences and filed a paperwork with the New York Department of State. It was unlikely the actual co-ops organised by Machinists would have been approved by the Attorney General. It was only after receiving down payments from future co-op members that Machinists actually went about purchasing the relevant buildings and then formed the co-ops. This meant Machinists had been collecting money for co-ops that did not exist and for buildings they did not own.
00:15:10
Speaker
Michounas obtained some grant funding from the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a majoring New York foundation with a focus on the arts and artists' housing in particular, to assist with the law of purchase costs. Over time, his failure to follow proper procedure, as well as his overall management style led to tensions with co-op residents and the local authorities.
00:15:29
Speaker
He often insisted on being appointed as contractor for Major Renovation Works. He also blatantly disregarded the law relating the handling of payments he received from co-op members. Since he viewed Flux House as one large business venture, he used payments residents paid to him for one building to secure purchase deposits for another.
00:15:48
Speaker
In 1974, the Attorney General investigated his failure to properly register his co-ops and his legal handling of members' fees. He did, however, continue his involvement in law of conversions through partners until 1978. Despite his questionable business practices, Machunas' energy, focus and knowledge was effective and influential. He managed to organize cooperatives at 16 buildings on Worcester Street, Grand Street, Prince Street, Green Street and Broome Street, all located in Soho.
00:16:18
Speaker
As more artists moved to Soho during the 1960s, the collective created a new argument. Their actions had helped develop the city's cultural economy, but also served the purpose of reviving real estate values in previously declining areas. 1970 saw the formation of the Soho Artists Association, and rekindled the push for changes that would give those living in lofts the sanction of law.
00:16:40
Speaker
Artists organizing boar fruit in 1971. Changes to the city's zoning ordinance and New York State's multiple dwelling law created a special district in Soho that allowed certified artists to live in the area provided they were licensed to do so by the Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs.
00:16:58
Speaker
In 1973, Soho's cast-iron historic district won designation from the city's Landmark Commission, preserving the area's built environment and giving it prominence and prestige as an architectural gem.
00:17:13
Speaker
The Soho artists were able to surf the wave of the backlash against proposed urban renewal projects such as the Lower Manhattan Expressway and New York University expansion projects, which would have decimated Soho and negatively affected surrounding areas. One such urban renewal project was the Middle Income Co-operators of Greenwich Village, or MICOV, which advocated the demolition of Soho and its rebuilding as a housing project.
00:17:37
Speaker
In response, Professor Chester Rapkin produced a report, sponsored by the City Planning Commission, which argued that SOHO's small businesses functioned as important industrial incubators that produced essential jobs for New York's working-class African-American and Latino populations. This report was a significant factor in SOHO being saved from the Mike Hove wrecking ball.
00:18:01
Speaker
Between 1945 and 1970, plans to construct the Lower Manhattan Expressway through the heart of Soho remained in place. The threat of the project suppressed local investment, but allowed artists to find vacant lofts at cheap rent levels. By renovating industrial lofts that policymakers viewed as slums, artists produced a new use for vacant industrial space.
00:18:23
Speaker
In lobbying for the regularization of the residential loft, Soho artists posited a new post-industrial future for New York that did not rely on slum clearance or urban renewal. Soho artists were not the first people to live in former industrial structures, but they were novel in their approach to establishing this practice on a wide scale, taking the investment risk
00:18:45
Speaker
putting in physical labour to convert factories into residential lofts and fighting the political battles necessary to legalise the process. The success of the movement to defeat the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway is a perfect example of grassroots community action and solidarity in the face of overwhelming odds.
Opposition to the Lower Manhattan Expressway
00:19:05
Speaker
Between 1947 and 1970, the most powerful civic leaders in New York, including Robert Moses and several of the city's mayors, had pushed to construct the 10-lane Lower Manhattan Expressway along Broome Street and through the heart of Soho. These efforts intensified in the early 1960s, just as Soho's artist community had started to grow.
00:19:26
Speaker
The LME was a similar project to various other highway projects in New York, including the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Grand Central Parkway and the Cross Bronx Expressway, created under the guidance of master builder Robert Moses. These projects had spurred growth but had destroyed older residential and business communities in the process.
00:19:46
Speaker
Robert Moses was an influential urban planner and high-ranking civil servant who pervaded governmental life in New York State for the majority of the 20th century, despite never being elected to public office at any point. At various points he served as an appointed New York Secretary of State, Chairman of the New York State Council of Parks, and between 1942 to 1960, New York City Planning Commissioner.
00:20:11
Speaker
In the post-war years, he was effectively New York's representative in Washington for construction and development matters, having been given a wide remit under Mayor William O'Dwyer. Moses was responsible for many of New York's states' expressways, parkways and other highways. However, his political influence declined as the 1960s progressed, and his involvement with certain projects
00:20:33
Speaker
including the demolition and redevelopment of the city's historic Pennsylvania station in Midtown enraged his opponents, many of whom openly criticized Moses' apparent hostility towards development of public transportation in the city.
00:20:47
Speaker
Many of the parkways and expressways constructed under Moses' authority were seen to inhibit the expansion of the subway network in New York. He faced accusations at various points in his career of making recreational developments such as public schools, parks and playgrounds inaccessible to anyone without ownership of privately owned automobiles. The implication being that there was a deliberate attempt on his part to exclude working class and lower middle class families and others from more affluent white neighbourhoods.
00:21:14
Speaker
This point is argued by author Robert Caro in his 1974 award-winning biography of Robert Moses, titled The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. Moses' winning influence was evident in his field attempts to implement the Lower Manhattan Expressway through Soho in the 1960s.
00:21:36
Speaker
Other than Moses, the leading proponent of the expressway was David Rockefeller, President of Chase Manhattan Bank and brother of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller headed one of the city's most powerful planning organizations, the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association, or DLMA, which counted among its members Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, American Express and Goldman Sachs.
00:21:59
Speaker
Rockefeller viewed Soho as a depressed economic valley between the high-priced areas of Midtown and the Wall Street Financial District of the South. Efforts to build the expressway ran parallel with efforts to renew Soho through the construction of housing projects such as MyGov, which had prompted Chester Rapkin's report.
00:22:18
Speaker
The incentive to create the expressway was supposedly to ensure Manhattan would be able to compete with suburban areas by facilitating faster and more convenient car travel and to enable the expansion of the financial district northwards. This came at a time where conservative emphasis was on suburbanization and an increasing antipathy to inner-city residential living.
00:22:40
Speaker
DLMA efforts inspired grassroots resistance from residents and business owners in Soho, many of whom had seen the negative consequences of urban renewal and similar infrastructure projects in other neighbourhoods. The looming spectre of the expressway had immediate negative consequences for Soho, faced with the possibility of vesting and demolition,
00:23:00
Speaker
The owners of industrial loft buildings had for decades failed to improve or maintain their properties. The project caused industrial vacancy rates to rise and rents to decrease. Curiously, these negative effects enabled artists to obtain affordable and spacious living space.
00:23:17
Speaker
In 1962, the Board of Estimate had deferred a vote for acquiring land for the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Robert Moses left many of his state-level posts to accept a position as head of the 1964 World Fair project. In April 1963, Mayor Robert Wagner moved to table the expressway project for good, requesting the city to remove the highway from its official planning map.
00:23:41
Speaker
The City Planning Commission held a five-hour meeting to consider the proposal at which Moses and other DLMA reps were present. They argued that SOHO was not living up to its commercial potential and could be revitalized by the expressway.
00:23:56
Speaker
Consequently, plans for the expressway remained on the official planning map for the city. It was only at the point of near-death that the only section of the expressway ever to materialise was constructed. In 1963, the Department of Highway spent $2 million on base-level slabs to facilitate the creation of a new subway tunnel under Christie Street. Rockefeller and Moses moved to push the expressway forward.
00:24:19
Speaker
The DLMA Executive Committee met with Robert Wagner and worked with local transit authorities, over which Moses exercised influence, to present a report in favour of the project at the Board of Estimate. Social theorist and activist Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which remains one of the most influential books in the history of American city planning, led the Joint Committee to stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
00:24:43
Speaker
The group, which consisted of 28 local, religious, political and civil organisations, made representations to City Hall to argue that the expressway would destroy thousands of jobs in Soho, many of which were held by black and Puerto Rican minorities that the city should be seeking to protect.
00:25:01
Speaker
As head of the West Village Association, Jacobs had previous experience in successfully fighting Robert Moses in his efforts to build an extension of Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park in the 1950s. This experience stood the Joint Committee well in their opposition to plans for the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
00:25:19
Speaker
Preservationists had challenged the Lower Manhattan Expressway during the 1960s on the basis that it would destroy the historically and architecturally significant cast-iron buildings along Broome Street and elsewhere in Soho. The New York Times architectural critic Ida Louise Huxtable was an outspoken supporter of architectural preservation
00:25:38
Speaker
particularly cast-iron architecture. She became a public figure in the fight against the expressway and raised concerns in 1965 that the highway's path would destroy some of Soho's most significant cast-iron buildings, calling them the richest strand of Victorian architecture of the Civil War era in the city and one of the best survivals of the Iron Age in the country.
00:25:59
Speaker
Mayor Wagner, having failed to dismiss efforts by Moses to denigrate Soho as a blighted area with abundant vacancies, fires and building code violations, allowed the approval process for the expressway to move forward at the end of 1964. However, the DLMA were not able to convince an important rising star in New York politics, the progressive congressman John Lindsay, of the value of the expressway.
00:26:26
Speaker
In previous episodes, we've mentioned John Lindsay in the context of his efforts to remove the draconian cabaret card requirements for performing jazz musicians in the city and his involvement on the planning committee for the 1972 Newport Jazz Festival. When Congressman Lindsay ran for mayor in 1965, he made the Lower Manhattan Expressway an election issue, and through his support, behind its opponents, Lindsay was elected mayor in November 1965.
00:26:55
Speaker
Lindsay had used New York's Landmarks Preservation Law in his efforts to stop the expressway from being built. In February 1966, one month after taking office, Lindsay led the Board of Estimate in ratifying the landmark designation of the E.V. Hogwarts Building
00:27:11
Speaker
a commercial building constructed in 1857 at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway that stood in the path of the expressway. The particular cast-iron structure of the building, necessitated by facades facing two separate streets, has led many to speak of the building as a prototype for 20th century skyscrapers. Its landmark status was approved and the New York Times later claimed the will to avert the destruction of this particular building was the singular factor that tipped the scales against the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
00:27:41
Speaker
The building's value as a work of art in and of itself was sufficient to justify its existence, and it effectively operated as a talisman to safeguard the entire neighbourhood of Soho. By May 1966, information had leaked that the expressway was out under the new administration.
00:27:58
Speaker
By July 1965, Lindsay had removed Robert Moses from his post to city arterial highway coordinator, leaving plans for the expressway seemingly dead in the water. There was still time enough for one last death rattle.
00:28:13
Speaker
After being elected, Lindsay did roll back somewhat on his anti-expressway election promises, attempting to forge a compromise by developing plans for a four-lane expressway that would travel partially through tunnels and open cuts that were below ground level but uncovered.
00:28:29
Speaker
The Mayor hoped this would prevent the community disruption that would come with an elevated highway. The plan drew strong objections from local residents and political leaders, including Councillor and future Mayor Ed Koch, who spearheaded protests. Despite local objections in March 1968, the Board of Estimate approved Lindsay's plan in principle, as did state and federal agencies. The DLMA supported the new plans and public hearings at the City Planning Commission,
00:28:57
Speaker
Activist Jane Jacobs was charged with disorderly conduct after storming the stage of a hearing on the roadway plans at the New York State Department of Transportation in April 1968. By that point, opponents of the expressway realized that the new highway plan would decimate Soho's burgeoning artistic community, offering them new ammunition to relaunch their objections.
00:29:19
Speaker
It was ultimately the potential for environmental damage and the risk to public health that saw plans for the expressway permanently shelved. Using data collected from the Department for Air Resources in 1968, a group named the New York Scientists Committee for Public Information found that air quality near the proposed highway would be hazardous to the health of nearby residents, with dangerous levels of carbon monoxide poisoning. More extensive studies were undertaken by the Department for Health, Education and Welfare.
00:29:48
Speaker
By March 1969, Mayor Lindsay asked for federal funds to study alternative roadway proposals to reroute traffic across the southern tip of Manhattan.
Soho's Cultural and Economic Boom
00:29:58
Speaker
This project had the backing of many of the Lower Manhattan Expressway's opponents. At the Mayor's urging, the Lower Manhattan Expressway was removed from the official planning map of New York by the City Planning Commission in August 1969.
00:30:13
Speaker
By preventing the expressway's construction, anti-urban renewal forces saved Zoho for its loft residents, gallery owners and entrepreneurs to build a new type of residential neighbourhood. When the threat of the expressway lifted, Zoho experienced a commercial renaissance based on investment in its undervalued loft buildings. Effort stability expressway had ultimately played a significant part in priming the built environment for habitation by the artistic community.
00:30:39
Speaker
The entire neighbourhood of Soho became a registered landmark in 1973. This designation meant that approximately 500 buildings in the area could not be demolished or altered without the approval of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
00:30:55
Speaker
The importance of Soho as a cultural centre point for New York in the 70s cannot be underestimated, not only for the former industrial area itself, but for the growth of musical and arts-based venues in the surrounding areas. Soho was home to the jazz lofts of Warnock Coleman's Artist's House on Prince Street.
00:31:11
Speaker
Ali's Alley on Green Street, operated by Rashid Ali, Enveron, established by Dave Brubeck's sons Chris and Danny, and Axis on West Broadway. Studio Riv B, run by Simon B Rivers, was situated at Bond Street, just off Soho's north-east corner.
00:31:27
Speaker
After its initial run at the Mercer Arts Centre, the Experimental Arts Collective at the Kitchen moved into Soho at the corner of Worcester and Broome Street where they remained until 1986. David Mancuso's immersive disco house party night at the Loft was originally situated at 647 Broadway on Soho's north-east corner before moving into the heart of Soho at 99 Prince Street in 1975.
00:31:51
Speaker
The second iteration of Nicky Siano's revered disco night at the gallery opened in November 1974 at 172 Mercer and Houston Street on Soho's east side. Looking ahead to the late 1970s, the artwork luminaries of New York coalesced around the Mud Club on White Street
00:32:09
Speaker
close to Soho's southern boundary. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Madonna both lived on Crosby Street in Soho in the early 1980s, as did many other aspiring artists. Mural artist Keith Haring staged regular exhibitions in the galleries of Soho, which bloomed during the 1970s, becoming the backbone of the local arts scene.
00:32:30
Speaker
Some of the early Soho art galleries were outposts of the established Midtown galleries, located between East 57th and East 59th Street off Madison Avenue. Richard Fagan, who ran a reputable gallery on 81st Street and Madison Avenue, was the first to open a gallery in the Soho neighborhood on Green Street in 1967.
00:32:50
Speaker
Doing so eliminated the inconvenience of having to rent warehouse space for storage and the corresponding requirement to take potential buyers to multiple locations to view and buy art. Ivan Karp, former salesman for Leo Castelli, famed for selling pop art, established the OK Harris Gallery at 465 West Broadway in 1969, an abandoned warehouse with 7,000 square feet of space to operate with.
00:33:17
Speaker
Max Hutchinson, an Australian gallery owner, moved into 127 Green Street in 1969, and the Reese Pally Gallery opened at 93 Prince Street in 1970. In 1971, the massive warehouse at 420 West Broadway was occupied by the uptown establishment. The building was originally scoped out by the Hague Art Delivery, a company founded by two Dutch-American partners, Fritz Denette and Wouter Germans.
00:33:45
Speaker
who contracted regularly with Leo Castelli's gallery. The company's main job was moving art for midtown art dealers. Due to the massive size of some of the contemporary American art, the company needed substantial warehouse space to fulfill its obligations. Their first engagement was to move and store James Rosenquist's 86 foot long Pop Art Masterwork F-111. The painting eventually sold for $2.1 million at a Sotheby's auction in 1986.
00:34:15
Speaker
After their previous warehouse space uptown at 108th Street was condemned to make way for a housing development that was never constructed, they were informed about the vacant building at 420 West Broadway. They convinced Midtown Gallery owners Andrei Emmerich, Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnebend and John Weber, formerly of Midtown's Dwayne Gallery, to buy floors in the building. In this way they secured the $275,000 needed to acquire ownership.
00:34:43
Speaker
Before moving to Soho, Leo Castelli's Gallery in Midtown held the first solo shows by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in 1958 and the first Frank Stella and Cy Twombly exhibitions in 1960.
00:34:57
Speaker
The gallery also held the first exhibit of Roy Lichtenstein's large-scale comic book paintings in 1962, and the first exhibitions of minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. Many of these artists exhibited at Castelli's Gallery in Soho in its first season, with composer Philip Glass performing concerts at gallery events. Sales were significant, with Castelli's Gallery selling art at a value of $2.5 million in 1976, the equivalent of over $10 million in today's money.
00:35:26
Speaker
The Paula Cooper Gallery in Soho was the first to open, which did not have a connection to a pre-existing midtown establishment. She looked at opening new downtown gallery and saw the open loft spaces of Soho as ideal for establishing a new, fluid style of gallery, where collectors, artists and visitors could mingle comfortably, close to where the artists on display actually live. In 1968 Cooper rented two lofts on the third floor of 96 to 100 Prince Street,
00:35:53
Speaker
next to Fanelli's bar. She focused her energies on converting the 5,000 square feet of industrial loft space into a functioning art gallery to display a painting and sculpture. The challenge she faced, along with other gallery operators, was to convince the uptown art crowd to come downtown. On October 22, 1968, her first exhibition was an art benefit for the Student Mobilization Committee to end the war in Vietnam.
00:36:18
Speaker
The show included work by Soho resident Donald Judd, Saul Lewitt, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin. Paula Cooper's efforts and that of other gallery operators triggered an explosion of art display in Soho. By 1973 there were over 80 galleries in the neighbourhood.
00:36:33
Speaker
The art world moving downtown meant it became more accessible, community orientated, interdisciplinary and visitor friendly. The model of the Soho Gallery, large high ceiling white walled rooms became the standard image that most people today would associate with an art gallery.
00:36:48
Speaker
Art dealers began to place a greater emphasis on being close to where the artists lived, something that had never happened before in the city, despite the expansion of modern art in the post-war period. The focus before had always been on being in close proximity to neighbourhoods convenient to high-end art buyers or art institutions such as the famous museums. This led to the creation of a distinct arts community, where more space was available at cheaper rents.
00:37:13
Speaker
At the same time, commercial and cooperative performance art institutions presented performance art, dance and music created by diverse artists in Soho, including the jazz lofts we discussed in earlier episodes, dance companies and businesses which developed a cater for art tourists in the area, including retail and hospitality.
00:37:33
Speaker
Artist cooperative galleries were established to show local artists' works on a not-for-profit basis. Members' dues covered monthly rent, artists hung their own art, cleaned the gallery and handled their own publicity, but the galleries themselves did not derive any profit from art which was sold in these co-ops. Many co-ops received substantial funding through grant subsidies from governmental organizations such as the New York State Council of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Beginning with the opening of 55 Mercer,
00:38:03
Speaker
and the Ward-Nass Gallery in 1969, cooperative galleries and non-profit organizations flourished in Soho, with 112 Workshop and the Prince Street Gallery opening in 1970, followed by AIR and The Kitchen in 1971. Given the extent to which these organizations were funded by government subsidies, the sales of art to visitors was not essential for their survival.
Support for Diversity and Innovation in Art
00:38:26
Speaker
This model appealed to the counter-cultural and anti-capitalist tendencies of many of the artists involved in the Soho co-ops.
00:38:34
Speaker
AIR promoted itself as the first cooperative gallery of female artists in the United States and worked to provide greater opportunities for women to present their work in what was a male-dominated industry. One survey presented at the Gallery's opening reported that 94.5% of showings at leading New York galleries were of male artists' work. There was a complete absence of major one-woman shows at esteemed venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum.
00:39:01
Speaker
Like many other co-ops, AIR's founding members helped build and paint the walls of the gallery, rewired the electrics, removed rusted pipes and radiators, and contributed funds to complete complicated renovations. Through this labour and financial contribution, members then gained the entitlement to participate in the schedule of showings throughout the year.
00:39:23
Speaker
Zoho's cooperative galleries benefited from a favorable climate for arts funding at federal and state level. Zoho artists' colonies began to coalesce in the years following the establishment of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1965. The NEA grew out of governmental efforts during the Cold War to highlight American artists' freedom and celebrated status as a counterpoint to the struggles of Soviet artists.
00:39:45
Speaker
President Richard Nixon increased NEA funding from $7 million in 1968 to $64 million in 1974, just as the first galleries were opening in Soho. Likewise, Governor Nelson Rockefeller increased the budget of the New York State Council of the Arts from $2.2 million to $20.1 million in 1972. By 1977, 50% of AIR's budget came from governmental subsidies.
00:40:13
Speaker
There was an initial reluctance on the part of the NEA to fund avant-garde art, the original ethos of the organisation being to protect and enshrine more traditional Western art forms. However, under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, the NEA began to fund feminist art, performance art and video art, all of which were abundant in Soho at the time.
00:40:35
Speaker
It was also a disproportionately high level of funding for New York artists compared to the rest of the United States, which only served to amplify the city's cultural importance at this time and to attract artists to live in the city, notwithstanding the multitude of other economic problems the city faced. Sociologist Sharon Zukin identifies the availability of grant funding at state and federal levels as being central to regularizing artists' employment and bringing them more solidly into the middle class.
00:41:05
Speaker
This helped to effectively legitimize loft living as a trendy lifestyle, making it more attractive to other members of the middle class, who then looked at the settled post-industrial lofts of Soho as an ideal new form of home in the city. The success of the artists in creating a new form of urban redevelopment paved the way for the gentrification that would ultimately price them out of the neighbourhood towards the end of the 1970s.
00:41:28
Speaker
The Experimental Performance Venue 112 workshop was founded in 1970 by Jeffrey Liu and Gordon Matta-Clark at 112 Green Street in Soho, the site of an abandoned rag recycling factory. Painters and sculptors, but also dancers and musicians, flocked the 112 workshop as they were given free reign to use the space in any way they wished. The gallery hosted exhibitions by Richard Cera, Avant-Garde Dance Choreographed by Suzanne Harris,
00:41:56
Speaker
experimental theatre by Mabou Mines and musical performance by the Philip Glass Ensemble. 112 Workshop functioned as a proving ground for groundbreaking artists who were often poached by the larger galleries or established theatres based on their success. Partly for this reason, the New York State Council of the Arts generously funded 112 Workshop because it offered a variety of abstract art and avant-garde performance that was absent
00:42:21
Speaker
from the more established commercial venues. In 1976, NEA grant funding represented 87% of the venue's total income. Dance performance also grew throughout Soho during the early 1970s, with the expansive loft spaces suited to the performers' needs.
00:42:38
Speaker
In 1974, the Bird Hoffman Foundation established their headquarters at 147 Spring Street in Soho, initially for the purpose of promoting the experimental dance and theatre of Robert Wilson, who co-wrote Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass. Gallery owners like Paula Cooper, a non-profit venue such as The Kitchen, which we discussed in our last episode, also hosted dance troupes. Choreographer Meredith Monk regularly staged musical and dance performances at her home at 228 West Broadway in Tribeca.
00:43:08
Speaker
Now adjacent to the curious New York landmark of the Ghostbusters headquarters, the frequency of performances in Monk's home led to her group earning the moniker The House. On September 11, 2001, while performing in Germany, Bjork performed Meredith Monk's piece, Gotham Lullaby, in dedication to the city of Manhattan on the day of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
00:43:47
Speaker
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00:44:06
Speaker
The content of this episode is largely derived from an excellent book by Princeton professor Aaron Scuda, titled The Lofts of Soho, Genderification, Art and Industry in New York, 1950-1980. In the second half of this season on New York in the 1970s, which we'll complete at some point in the future, we'll return to examine how artistic residence in Soho was compromised by a combination of economic factors and the failure of legal regulations to keep up with the pace of economic changes in the city.
00:44:35
Speaker
Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon with our final episodes in this half of the season examining the birth of hip hop and disco in New York in the early 1970s.