Soho

1840s-era building, Broadway north of Canal

There was a time in this fair city when Sixth Avenue did not run all the way south to Tribeca. In fact, for about the first century of its existence,…

Wooster Street runs from Canal Street north to West Houston, just east of West Broadway. Its northern reaches from W. Houston to Washington Square were aken over by New York University…

Soho’s Prince Street runs west from the Bowery to 6th Avenue at Macdougal and Charlton Streets. In the pre-Revolutionary era, there were a number of streets named for the British royalty,…

I think it was 1992 when I first spotted Renwick Street. In the summer of that year I was freelancing at a type shop named ModKomp, entered from a loading dock…

Mer’ • cer [Middle English, from Old French mercier, trader, frommerz, merchandise, from Latin merx, merc-, merchandise.] A dealer in textiles, especially silks. Soho’s Mercer Street, which runs for 12 blocks from Canal St. north…

Unfortunately, most of NYC’s beautiful buildings date to between 1850 and 1940, the castiron, Beaux Arts and Art Deco-Art Moderne periods. Thereafter, minimalism took hold with the International Style’s glass…

Howard Street is something of an anomaly as far as Soho east-west cross streets go. It’s the shortest of them all, running only 4 blocks, from Mercer east to Lafayette just…

In January 2005 I walked the Bowery and documented the remains of its old-time flophouse – and wholesale lamp and kitchen supplies ambience. I don’t lament its demise; though I’d…

Sometimes, you can walk past something a hundred times and never know it’s Forgottenworthy. That’s what happened this week [March 19-25, 2006] when news broke that the Tunnel Garage, a venerable…

For much of its history, it’s been an avenue without a number, ever since it was proclaimed the Avenue of the Americas in 1945. New Yorkers have always referred to it…

You’re not supposed to call it 6th Avenue, you know. 6th Avenue has a rather involved history. It has been extended both northward and southward and has been renamed twice! In…