SoHo NYC is a fashionable shopping district with many boutiques and restaurants.
The name “SoHo” stands for “South of Houston” (pronounced “How-ston” not “Hew-ston”). After the name got established in the 196os, similar contractions became popular for rebranding New York City neighborhoods.
Broadway and West Broadway, Prince St and Spring St are the main shopping streets. Side streets are lined with upscale boutiques. For a quick introduction, we would walk Prince Street from Broadway to West Broadway, turn south, and walk back on Spring St to Broadway.
The SoHo Cast Iron Historic District has many beautiful buildings fronted by cast iron facades from the late 1800s. Greene Street is the most famous cast-iron street.
Culture in SoHo
Drawing Center
Drawing Center in SoHo is an art museum that places the art of drawing in the context of contemporary culture.…
SoHo is Grand
The neighborhood was the first free Black community in Manhattan. It began to grow in the mid-1800s. Manufacturers moved in after the U.S. Civil War (1860-1865). The area declined after World War II.
In the 1960s, Robert Moses, one of the main architects of modern New York City (Triborough Bridge, FDR, West Side Highway, Cross-Bronx Expressway), planned to run two highways through the neighborhood from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges on the East Side. The community fought back and ended the reign of Robert Moses.
In the 1950s, artists began building illegal lofts in the largely abandoned neighborhood. Art galleries soon followed and the neighborhood gentrified. The pioneering artists were grandfathered in the 1980s.
In search of cheap rent and a Bohemian lifestyle, the art world mostly moved on to the East Village, then Williamsburg, and then Berlin, Germany. SoHo is still an art district, but mostly for commercial art popular with tourists.