The Lofts of SoHo by Aaron Shkuda

Author:Aaron Shkuda [Shkuda, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226334219
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Lofts and Gentrification

In the period after the defeat of urban renewal projects in SoHo, artists and local business owners provided a more permanent solution to the problem of what to do with SoHo’s loft buildings. The value that artists added to loft buildings through their renovations demonstrated that a viable new use for SoHo lofts existed, as evidenced when New Yorkers beyond the artists’ circle found loft living desirable, and prices of residential lofts soared, indicating that SoHo real estate was fast becoming an industry in its own right. Thus, not only did artists help save the neighborhood’s built environment from renewal and redevelopment, but they also rehabilitated this space so that it could be reclaimed and recycled as profitable housing stock.

This redevelopment was far from natural. What occurred in SoHo was not a simple movement of capital from an area of high value to one of low value, nor was it an inevitable result of a reaction among urban liberals to the values of the suburbs. The neighborhood’s development depended on the advocacy work of artists and preservationists, as well as the area’s specific architectural inheritance. Without artists and preservationists publicizing as well as rehabilitating the image of these structures, city residents would not have known about the benefits of loft living. Similarly, without the impressive loft spaces available in SoHo, few would have paid attention to the neighborhood. Its unique industrial spaces also contributed to the new interior design aesthetic that artists brought to the masses through tours, festivals, and the press.

Artists themselves played a significant role in promoting their own neighborhood. On one hand, one can hardly blame groups such as the SoHo Artists Association for doing what they could to legalize their homes and protect their investments. However, by turning art festivals into de facto open houses and by encouraging the press to come into homes to write lifestyle pieces, local artists did much to encourage the public at large to learn about the benefits of loft living. The neighborhood’s gentrification was in many ways an unintended consequence of its politics. In addition, through publicizing the positive effect artists had on struggling urban neighborhoods, the SAA helped created a link between artists and urban change just as gentrification was coming into the scholarly vernacular.57

Some SoHo residents were already growing wary of the effect that the promotion of the neighborhood had on its development. Jared Bark and some of his fellow artist friends felt that the push for legalization was mostly due to efforts of the “more bourgeois wing of the artists community,” those who had bought lofts and “were trying to make it safe for investment.” During the SoHo Artists Festival, when politicians and artists were lauding the rebirth of SoHo, he thought, “Oh God, this is the beginning of the end! And, it was, in fact.”58

By the mid-1970s, SoHo artists had transformed lofts into distinctive homes, partially legalized the practice of living in former industrial space, and promoted this new type of housing to a more general public.

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