As May begins with International Workers’ Day, this month we are looking back on the struggles, fights and gains of the labor movement locally, as illustrated by the history of 427-429 Broadway.

427-429 Broadway was originally home to one of the district’s major hotels: the City Hotel, which was later renamed the Tontine Hotel after the Civil War. It was in a prime location that was a short walking distance from three major train stations: the Harlem, New Haven and Hudson River Depots. Around the mid-1800s, the neighborhood along Broadway and Howard Street was increasingly becoming more commercial in nature.

By 1870, the hotel was demolished and to be converted into a modern loft and retail building. For this project, architect Thomas R. Jackson enlisted a relatively new innovation at the time: a cast-iron facade. It involved installing pre-fabricated cast iron components to masonry fronts of buildings, imitating carved stone. Additionally, it made the facades fireproof. Jackson dressed the facade with intricate French Rennaisance decorations in cast-iron. As a major advantage of cast-iron is the speed of construction it enables, the building was completed within a mere six months.

The building was home to many merchants, from those that specialized in fur to dry goods sellers. John M. Davies & Co. moved into the building in 1876. In a blog post a source describes the company as “the leading house and originator in men’s furnishing goods.” Unfortunately, this company was the site of much tension with its workforce. Conflict initiated with the hiring of a new superintendant named Schautz with an annual pay that was $3000 over his predecessor, Straub. Straub had been fired by the company for being pro-union.

The workers stated that they were fond of Superintendent Straub, and attemped to continue their work as they had before following his replacement by Schautz. Workers believed the the change in management would not impact them greatly. When Schautz came in, his plan was to “thoroughly reorganize the working system of the factory by following a policy of the most rigid economy.” He began with a 10% reduction in workers’ wages. However, the staff noticed that many of Schautz’s friends that joined the company were brought in with much higher wages. Long-time employees were laid off and many of the new men brought in made more than those that were removed.

A major breaking point was in 1887, when Schautz told female workers that he was to slash their wages by $3-$4 per week (approximately $111 in today’s currency). The workers fought back claiming that “no respectable girl can board and clothe herself on that amount.” Schautz appeared to agree in order to appease the workers.

However, the workers were deceived when a few days later came another cut which averaged 50 percent over all classes of work. Schautz declined to meet or speak with the women, eventually leading to the entire female workforce walking out. A New York Times article from July 1887 states that the entire factory was essentially shut at the time, with very few workers and no female employees inside the factory. Schautz told the Times that he was certain that the women would submit to his terms in a few days. The women counteracted by suggesting that all they wanted was “a fair show”, and that if the company was so short on finances, Schautz should instead “knock something off of his own salary.”

Ultimately, the strike was resolved, however the end of the firm was near. The company shut down three years later in 1890. Today, even after a century and a half, the building still stands intact with its cast-iron facade and as a forgotten footnote in the history of the labor movement, and currently houses THC NYC.

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Believe it or not, Canal Street was not only once an actual canal, but it was also the northernmost border of New York City. In the early-1800’s, an old stone bridge (pictured above) straddled the border between city and country on Broadway. The land south of the bridge was “the city,” where people lived and worked. Collect Pond, a fresh water reservoir that provided drinking water to city-dwellers, was just north of current-day City Hall and fed into the canal that gave Canal Street its name, which in turn emptied out into the Hudson River.

Here, Walker Bicker describes his memories of the bridge and its environs in the early 19th century in The New York Times:

Broadway was not paved beyond “the stone bridge” which stood where Canal-street now crosses Broadway. This was a famous resort for us schoolboys. It was considered “out of town”—all north beyond as well as the immediate vicinity was country, post and rail fences dividing the land into different sized parcels. This bridge spanned a small stream which conveyed water from the Collect on the east side of Broadway (where now stands the Tombs) to the west side, where was an extensive meadow covering most of the ground from Broadway to the north River and from Lispenard Street to Spring Street.

Lispenard’s Meadow (photo: New York Public Library)

An extensive meadow on Spring Street! If only we had such green space in lower Manhattan today. Even back then, however, New York City was already developing into the future, and this idyll was soon paved over to make way for houses and businesses as the city quickly expanded northward. The Canal, too, was soon paved over, becoming so polluted and smelly that the residents on either side of the waterway cried foul.

Article by Yukie Ohta, founder of The SoHo Memory Project 

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This Women’s History Month, we focus on the the impactful legacy of women who have lived and worked as artists in SoHo. Specifically, we are looking back on the work of May Stevens and her famed 1978 painting titled SoHo Women Artists.

Stevens was known for using her artwork as a medium of activism, and this is evident in her work. In a career spanning 70 years, she created art to combat social injustice and amplify female voices. Stevens lived and worked in SoHo with her husband Rudolf Baranik (also an artist) and their dog, Sparta. Stevens was one of the pioneers of the 1970s feminist art movement in New York City. Banding together with other female artists and critics to raise awareness and consciousness questioning the patriarchy within the arts, she actively engaged in social change. Stevens and nineteen other women formed a feminist collective which created a quarterly magazine titled Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. In a recent SoHo Memory Project article, Yukie Ohta looked back on a conversation between two Heresies founders, Joyce Kozloff and Elizabeth Weatherford.

At 12 feet wide, May Steven’s SoHo Women Artists is monumental, both in scale and ambition. The painting is said to mimic an academic history painting in a contemporary style. Historically, traditional western paintings from classical or Christian history have tended to exclude female figures. SoHo Women Artists is part of a series of history-referencing works created by Stevens to present and call for the inclusion of women in art history. The work reflects an alternative history: one which recognizes and proportionately represents female artists. This series was inspired by the 1971 ARTnews article “Why have there been no great women artists?” by Linda Nochlin.

The painting was created through referencing photographs of Stevens’ friends who helped shaped the feminist art revolution having roots in SoHo. Organized in a frieze-style composition, the women in the painting are as follows (from left to right): Signora d’Apolito, owned a bakery frequented by Heresies members; two men from SoHo’s Italian-American community; May Stevens herself; artists Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff (with her son Nikolas), and Marty Pottenger, fellow Heresies; Louise Bourgeois in a wearable sculpture created by herself; artist Miriam Schapiro and critic Lucy Lippard (also a fellow Heresies member); and lastly artist Sarah Charlesworth.

In the book titled May Stevens, author Patricia Hill states that “[Stevens’] aim was to highlight feminists working independently but in concert” and deconstruct history to highlight those silenced and unrecorded lives.

Top Image: May Stevens in her SoHo studio in 1978. Credit: The New York Times, 2020

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SoHo is most commonly known for its rich artistic legacy and distinguished architecture, but in the many layers of its past lies the lesser-known stories of the role played by the neighborhood in African American history. According to Historian Christopher Moore, what is now SoHo was home to the very first enclave of emancipated African American people in all of the United States. Since that time, African American New Yorkers have been repeatedly displaced and excluded for centuries, making SoHo a space where racial lines have constantly been contested and redrawn. This Black History month, we look back on the significance of African American history in SoHo.

During the 1620s, the Dutch West India Company captured 11 people of African descent, enslaved them, and sent them to Manhattan by force to create the colony of New Amsterdam. By 1644, the enslaved group fought against the company for their emancipation and negotiated a status attaining “half-freedom” wherein they were able to achieve wages, have the right to marry, own property, and testify in court. This type of partial emancipation also entailed the allocation of several tracts of land for living and farming purposes — which included large swathes of what is known today as SoHo. The neighborhood came to be known as the “Land of the Blacks”, with the emancipated populations occupying 130 acres of land in present day lower Manhattan. While the Dutch system of partial emancipation was still in deep violation of human rights, being able to own and farm land enabled the earliest Black New Yorkers forms of autonomy that was unfortunately taken away from future generations.

In 1664, these Black landowners were forced to give up their land once England took over New Amsterdam. The majority of it was transferred to wealthier, white landowners who continued to own sizable estates in the area for the following century. By the middle of the 19th century, these estates were gradually parceled out and sold — increasingly becoming home to an growing number of working-class Italian, Jewish, and Irish immigrants — but the neighborhood continued to have the largest Black population in the city.

The Eight Ward, within Houston Street, Broadway, West Broadway, and Canal Street as its perimeter, was home to 7% of the city’s population and 18% of New York’s Black population in 1850. Sections of what are now western SoHo/South Village north of Spring Street to Washington Square nearby became known as “Little Africa“.

As New York City industrialized, the majority of Black families once again had their properties taken away in downtown Manhattan. Later in the 1800s, when the City decided to expand West Broadway to Waverly Place, 700 residents, the majority of whom were Black, were displaced as a result of the destruction of 127 properties. Soon after, it was replaced by the Romanesque- and Renaissance-revival lofts which are protected by the City’s historic preservation laws today.

In conversations surrounding the preservation of the neighborhood’s character and legacy, it is important to consider all aspects of history in SoHo, where racial lines were continuously redrawn and contested, and think about whose culture and community is preserved and whose was destroyed.

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As we head into the cold winter months, the SoHo Broadway Initiative is looking back at some of the biggest snowstorms recorded in New York City history. Starting with The Great Blizzard of 1888, we will examine the impact of snowstorms on residents’ quality of life and how, over the years, New York City has better adapted to supporting its citizens during winter storms and beyond.

The Great Blizzard of 1888

Heavy snow fell on New York City between March 12^th and March 14^th, 1888. The Great Blizzard of 1888, also known as the Storm of the Century, accrued a total of 21 inches of snow, causing massive disruptions to the daily lives of New Yorkers. Every elevated train line stopped running; the streets could not be trafficked by foot or carriage; and telecommunication lines were broken. Emergency dispatchers could not reach people in need. Nearly 200 people in New York City alone died from the destruction of the blizzard. The fallout from the blizzard put into perspective the need for modern infrastructure improvements. An excerpt from the original New York Times report reads:

“People vexed at the collapse of all the principal means of intercommunication and transportation became reflective, and the result was a general expression of opinion that an immediate and radical improvement was imperative. So the blizzard may accomplish what months, if not years, of argument and agitation might have failed to do.”

The New York Times; published March 13, 1888

The New York City subway system opened in 1904. The Bleecker Street station near Broadway-Lafayette was one of the original 28 stations of the New York City Subway. Below is a photo of the groundbreaking ceremony in 1900:

However, not every New Yorker celebrated the push for modernity. Formed in 1929, the Blizzard Men of 1888, organized survivors of the blizzard every year on the anniversary of the blizzard to share stories with each other. Thomas Gilleran, chairman of the 1929 meeting told the Times:

“We blizzard survivors are not only organizing to keep alive the traditions of the store, but we are sick and tired of all this modernity and want to go back to the days when we New Yorkers lived simply and got our fun out of simple things.”

The New York Times; published March 3, 1929

The “Big Snow” of 1947

On December 26th, 1947, a snowstorm brought 26.4 inches of snow to New York City. While the total number of inches topped the aforementioned Blizzard of 1888, the 1947 snowstorm had a much milder impact on the city and its residents. According to the New York Historical Society, holiday travelers experienced cancellations and delays. Traffic moved slow and people were concerned about heating their homes. Life Magazine published a series of photos from the 1947 holiday snowstorm. Go back in time by viewing the photos here.

The 2006 East Coast Blizzard

At 26.9 inches of snow, the 2006 East-Cost Blizzard topped the record-breaking snowstorm from 1947. A New York Times article details the response to the blizzard, highlighting the various city and regional agencies that came together to organize a timely action plan. New York City allocated resources tasked at clearing streets. Specifically, the city “deployed 2,200 sanitation trucks rigged as snow plows, 76 Department of Transportation plows, and 350 salt spreaders that doubled as plows and dropped more than 50,000 tons of salt.” Despite many delays, New York City transit buses were able to run all day. The response to this storm also illustrates the many ways in which city residents come together to support each other during difficult times. As the author in this New York Times article recounts:

“Alongside the government forces, battalions of businesses and millions of civilians also fought the whipping, drifting snow, many armed with nothing more imposing than shovels and snow tires.”

The New York Times

Snow Days in SoHo

Through all seasons, the SoHo Broadway Clean Team (in partnership with Streetplus) takes care of the district’s streets and sidewalks. During and after every winter storm, the SoHo Broadway Clean Team removes snow and ice from the crosswalks, subway entrances, and in front of fire hydrants keeping our community safe and mobile.

Top photo: New York Times

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Did you know that what we call SoHo today, was once New York’s Garment District in the 1880s? During this time, H. Richter’s Sons necktie factory resided at 502 Broadway. This is where a young Ehrich Weiss was employed for nearly three years as an assistant lining cutter. Later on in his life, he would change his name to Harry Houdini, and become a world-renowned escape artist, illusionist, and magician. 

In fact, 502-504 Broadway, an 1868 cast-iron palace between Broome and Spring Streets, was the site of his first ever job. A story goes that Weiss supposedly secured the job at Richter’s Sons after spotting a long line of applicants against a ‘Help Wanted’ sign. He got to the front of the line and removed the sign and announced in an officious voice that the position had been filled. When the applicants dispersed and his competition cleared out, he went in and landed the job for himself. 

Whether true or not, 502 Broadway played an important part in the story of Houdini’s life. While working in the factory, Ehrich would spend much of his time reading the memoirs of Robert Houdin, famed French illusionist, which inspired him to choose the path in his life that ultimately led to his fame. One may wonder if a teenaged Houdini bound his wrists in ties and worked out how to slip out of them. This is also where he met fellow Richter’s employee, Jacob Hyman, who he would later partner with to create a magic act. In fact, it was Hyman who suggested to Weiss that if one were to add an ‘i’ to the last name of Houdin, it would mean “like-Houdin” in French. Thus, the name Houdini was born. 

502-504 Broadway has a long history — from being home to fancy goods merchants, to devastatingly destructive fires to where famous magicians had their humble beginnings. Today, the stunning cast-iron building is home to Bloomingdale’s — who knows if the next Houdini is currently working there!

Editor’s Note:  The Look Back series is on hiatus during this month. We hope you enjoyed this previous article from the series.

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Jesse Rifkin is a writer, historian and tour guide in New York City. His latest book, This Must Be The Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City, examines the fascinating history of how “real estate, gentrification, community and the highs and lows of New York City itself shaped the city’s music scenes from folk to house music.” This month, the SoHo Broadway Initiative is diving into the neighborhood’s music history, specifically the significance of joint live-work spaces as integral sites for the rise of “minimalism” and “loft jazz.”

Background

In the 1960s, SoHo’s cast-iron industrial lofts were abandoned as manufacturing jobs moved out. At the same time, Robert Moses campaigned for the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX) which would have displaced residents of the Lower East Side, SoHo and Little Italy.

Source: Gotham Center for New York City History

Jane Jacobs and other community members organized a successful resistance to the LOMEX proposal, and with the neighborhood’s future in flux, artists started occupying the upper floors of abandoned industrial lofts. These wide-open spaces with few neighbors were conducive to visual and musical artists alike. George Maciunas is referred to as the “Father of SoHo” for his contributions to the movement coalescing around joint live-work spaces for artists and their families. With grants from National Endowment of the Arts, Maciunas converted industrial lofts to live-work spaces like the one pictured below.

Source: Artsy

Loft Jazz

Live jazz music grew out of Harlem house parties in the 1920s. It was common for musicians to attend “jam sessions” at residential apartments, and by the 1950s traditional music venues in the West Village and SoHo regularly welcomed jazz performances. In 1961, world-renowned jazz musician Ornette Coleman moved into 131 Prince Street in SoHo where he converted the first floor of the building into a rehearsal and music venue (later named “Artist House.”)

Source: Point of Departure

Coleman’s 1970 album Friends and Neighbors was recorded at 131 Prince Street and exemplifies the qualities of “loft jazz”: a mix of modern, avant-garde, and improvised music heavily influenced by the traditions of jazz, classical, and Asian music. La Monte Young, Ornette Coleman, Yoko Ono, and John Cale are important contributors to the rise of Downtown’s loft jazz scene.

Source: Point of Departure

Minimalism

Classical composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass are credited for the rise of “minimalism”—the genre Rifkin describes as a modern extension of classical music “reduced to simple shapes and textures, leaning heavily on repetitive, cyclical phrases, rhythmic pulses, and/or drones.” Since classical music venues were not interested in minimalist music at the time, artists created a space for their music in SoHo’s industrial lofts where formal and informal performances and rehearsals were held. Below is a photo of Steve Reich and other musicians rehearsing at Reich’s loft.

Source: Richard (Dickie) Landry

The physical environment heavily influenced the musical output; musicians could arrange themselves in circles and play to an engaged audience. Regular performances were held at Donald Judd’s loft at 101 Spring Street, suggesting shared support between minimalist artists of all kinds. In the 1970s, Glass moved into the upper floor of 10 Bleecker Street where the Philip Glass Ensemble worked on the seminal composition, Music in Twelve Parts.

Source: Philip Glass Ensemble

And Beyond

SoHo continued to play a role in the evolution of other NYC music scenes in the following years. In the mid 1970s, The Gallery at 172 Mercer Street, the Flamingo at 599 Broadway, and the Loft at 99 Prince Street served as hotbed for disco. Proto-punk and art-rock bands like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads performed at The Kitchen at 59 Wooster Street. In 1981, members of emerging experimental rock band Sonic Youth organized Noise Fest at White Columns, a gallery at 325 Spring Street featuring several no wave bands over the course of a week.

While the epicenter of underground music communities migrated elsewhere in Manhattan in the decades that followed, and ultimately to Brooklyn and even Queens, the lofts of SoHo served as fertile ground for the development of important avant garde scenes in their prime.

Want to read more about the history of NYC music spaces? You can purchase Rifkin’s book here or visit your local bookstore!

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In observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a federally recognized holiday as of 2021, the SoHo Broadway Initiative is looking back at the history of Broadway and the significance of the Wickquasgeck Trail, a 13-mile-long trade route stewarded by the Lenape people, traversing the vast geographies of the island, Manahatta. The Wickquasgeck Trail served as a vital link for trade and communication between Lenape communities; it was a physical manifestation of the enduring interrelationship between people and their land.

Dutch colonial presence and land acquisition expanded during 17th-century with the creation of the Dutch West India Company in 1621. In 1626, the Dutch acquired land from the Lenape in exchange for goods amounting to 60 Dutch guilders (twenty-four U.S. dollars) and established the colony of New Amsterdam in what is considered Lower Manhattan today. However, historians acknowledge the subtleties and distinctions inherent to the “purchase” of Manhattan. The enduring narrative that the Lenape sold their ancestral land to Dutch colonists for only twenty-four dollars does not seriously consider the different cultural and economic views of land held by the Lenape communities.

Dutch colonists turned the Wickquasgeck Trail into BredeStraat, which translates to “broad street.” In the late 17th-century, English colonists renamed the street to Broadway. Through all of its iterations, Broadway is at the heart of the city’s economic activity. Acknowledging the significance of the Wickquasgeck Trail is not only an act of historical land acknowledgment but also a commitment to valuing the past, present and future contributions from Indigenous peoples on our culture, economy and built environment.

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This month, the Initiative is looking back at 591-593 Broadway, a pair of buildings completed in 1860 that shared an identical facade for nearly 40 years. The two buildings originally operated under separate ownership and a mix of retailers opened their businesses at 591-593.

An article from Daytonian in Manhattan charts the commercial history of 591-593 Broadway. Between 1860 and 1870, a tailoring business moved into 591 Broadway. From 1870-1900, E & H.T Anthony, a manufacturer of photographic materials, took over the entire building at 591 Broadway. Later, a rubber company took over the building. Next door at 593, T.S Berry sold pianos and other instruments. Later, Topham, Weld & Co., a men’s furnishings company, ran their business from 593.

At the turn of the 20th century, 591 Broadway (left) underwent significant renovations at the request of new building ownership, marking its transformative visual departure from 593 Broadway (right). The ground floors at 591-593 are currently combined to host a single retail tenant. As pictured below, Victoria’s Secret previously occupied the ground floors of 591-593 until 2020.

As of this writing, exterior work is underway on the facade, and we eagerly await the next retail tenant on the ground floor.

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