The rise and terminal plateau of SoHo.
We all know the procedure?artists quietly move into a run-down neighborhood or abandoned warehouse district in search of cheap rents. Word begins to spread that the area is now "hip." Within months, the developers start sniffing around, the first Starbucks opens, the first SUVs and baby strollers show up and the rents begin to skyrocket. Soon, everyone's rolling their eyes at any mention of the neighborhood's name and snorting about how it's "so over."
The East Village, Williamsburg, Hoboken, Dumbo, the meat-packing district?it's happened so often that there aren't many, if any, neighborhoods left in New York for the artists to homestead. There were rumors in recent years about the South Slope, Red Hook, Bed-Stuy and Sunset Park?but those never really took off.
The classic example of this, of course, is Soho. From the early 60s until, arguably, the mid-90s, Soho was the world capitol of avant-garde art. Music, dance, painting, theater?even a few never-before heard of art forms blasted off in new and unique directions. It was a neighborhood full of characters who would go on to change the face of modern art.
Richard Kostelanetz (renowned artist, writer, historian, composer, anthologist, etc.) was there through most of it, and charts out the Bell Curve of what he calls "Artist's SoHo" in his new book, SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artist's Colony.
The case of Soho as an artists' enclave was an absolutely unique one?not only in terms of the art that was created there, but in how it came about in the first place.
In the late 50s and early 60s, Soho (long before it was called "Soho") barely registered in the local consciousness. It was a dying warehouse and factory district, and no one had any reason to go there. The buildings were being shut down and abandoned by their owners as they moved their businesses uptown. Most of them wanted to dump the property they owned south of Houston fast, and were willing to sell cheap.
Some pioneering artists discovered that not only were these places inexpensive, they were huge and open as well?perfect for those whose work demanded a lot of space. They might've been a little light on the amenities and the plumbing might've been a little iffy, but still?all that space.
Problem was, the area wasn't zoned for residency; it was zoned for light manufacturing, making it illegal to live in these buildings. The new residents found their ways around that and in the early 70s, the city council passed an unprecedented piece of legislation, giving those who could prove that they were artists who needed a lot of room a Certificate of Occupancy (C.O.). They now had the right to move in,
Residency was granted to artists?and artists alone. Even then, only certain kinds of artists qualified; no writers, for instance, were allowed. Neither were commercial artists with regular jobs. Visual fine artists were, though, and dancers, and theater people.
In his book, Kostelanetz quite clearly lays out the political, legal and economic wranglings and tomfoolery that went into creating this arrangement. When I interviewed him at his loft recently, however, he said that in his opinion, things came together in part because the city simply had no idea what was going on down there.
"It was off the map. That's the important thing," he said. And being off the map?that is, a place utterly ignored and forgotten?nobody paid much attention to what was happening.
"Soho had no grocery stores," he writes, "no dry cleaners, no schools. No pharmacies, no libraries, no churches, and no synagogues? The only 'restaurants' were workers' luncheonettes that closed before sundown. For residential needs, the neighborhood was a desert."
It was awfully desolate, and that frightened a lot of people away.
"It wasn't a matter of the people being menacing," Kostelanetz told me. "It was a matter of there being nobody at all. We had rats, though. And they were real rats."
The artists took advantage of the opportunity and moved in by the hundreds, some with C.O.s, some without. Along with the rats, the raw spaces had thin walls, rickety stairs, manual elevators and usually no heat on the weekends. In moving in, the new residents accepted responsibility for any repairs or fixing up that needed doing.
The thing to keep in mind?which makes SoHo different from, say, Williamsburg?is that these people owned their spaces. That was certainly a new one for an urban artist's colony, as well as a situation that made many of them wealthy a few decades down the road.
Once it was established and the new residents had their lofts in shape and the galleries and theaters and performance spaces like the Kitchen started popping up, Kostelanetz (who moved to Wooster St. in 1974) says the atmosphere became like that of a college campus: "Most of the residents were about the same age, they shopped at the same places, saw the same shows, checked out the same galleries?they all knew each other."
More than that, he says, it was also "an educational institution without any degrees."
(And, as develops on a number of campuses and in a number of neighborhoods, it was a tight and closed community, with a serious distrust and dislike for interlopers?especially anyone who lived north of Houston.)
The neighborhood, as you might expect, given the way it came together, was full of eccentric characters. Guys like George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus movement?a mad genius who became a local real estate mogul with very little regard for real estate law. It could be argued that he turned real estate into a kind of conceptual art.
There was also Rene I Am the Best Artist, whose self-promotional murals can still be seen around Soho today. And Nam June Paik, the performance artist and videographer. Even Philip Glass helped install the plumbing on several lofts. In later years, it was also home to Suicide's Alan Vega and Sonic Youth.
The book is divided into short chapters, most of which concentrate on a single theme?a certain character, an art form as it existed in Soho, the politics of the art world and the like. Yet, taken together they provide a lively and important portrait of a neighborhood the likes of which may never be seen again.
In a way, his portrait of Soho is almost reminiscent of Herbert Ashbury's portrait of the Five Points area. Instead of an ongoing, 30-year gang riot, however, Soho in the 60s and 70s sounds like an anarchic, non-stop, rollicking explosion of creative energy. Everywhere you looked, it seems, there was someone else doing a new kind of theater, or music or dance, all at the same time, and all of them learning from one another. It was kind of an esthetic and cultural critical mass.
The difference, he told me, was that there was very little street life. "Nobody hung out on their stoop at night. They didn't hang around outside. The art was ongoing, but it wasn't visible?it was all in the lofts." There was nothing public about it, until the paintings hit the galleries or the new plays appeared at the Performing Garage.
Today that Soho is long gone. When, exactly, it began its decline depends on who you talk to. Most seem to place it between the mid-80s and mid-90s. Everyone seems to agree that by the mid-90s, it was pretty much over with.
"People always used to talk about real estate developers invading," he told me. "I don't know who they were?there weren't any."
Developers weren't necessary. For those who didn't own their spaces, the rents started climbing. The bookstores closed down and the galleries moved to west Chelsea (the vacant storefronts filling with boutiques). The street vendors started selling jewelry instead of paintings and used books.
Even Kostelanetz himself, now 63, is in the process of selling his loft and moving to the Rockaways. It has nothing to do with the changing neighborhood, he insists, but simply because he needs more space, and wants to live by the ocean.
Could such a situation ever happen again?
"No. It won't happen again because you won't have that much empty space in the city? If there is any such place, we probably don't know about it because it's off the map. For one reason or another, it's off the map."