The Art Market,Arts Funding,and Sweat Equity

Deindustrialization and SoHo’s Gallery Scene

Before its commercial renaissance, SoHo’s industrial past shaped the development of its artist and art gallery community. The neighborhood was mainly industrial through the 1960s, when artists began moving there. Most of its buildings were lofts, structures built from the 1840s to the 1860s to house department stores and other retail establishments. However, most had been converted for industrial use by the early twentieth century. ⁹ By 1962, SoHo contained about 650 warehousing, textile- and apparel-manufacturing, printing, and chemical-, rubber-, leather-, and paper-product-manufacturing firms as well as machine shops and businesses that made dolls and mechanical and electrical hardware. The neighborhood also housed companies that recycled textile scraps for reuse as wiping cloths and turned waste paper into bales fused to manufacture paperboard. ¹⁰

By the 1960s, SoHo was undergoing a process of deindustrialization that would shape its future development. In a 1975 study, the Real Estate Board of New York found that industrial buildings below 34th Street in Manhattan (an area that included SoHo) contained 4.1 million feet of vacant loft space, which represented 31 percent of the total rentable space in these buildings. ¹¹ Businesses left SoHo because they had trouble adapting their twentieth-century manufacturing technology to nineteenth-century structures. Operating industries in narrow, multistory buildings created numerous inefficiencies, particularly in an age of horizontally oriented production methods. Additionally, it was difficult for trucks to navigate SoHo’s narrow streets. To compound matters, SoHo businesses were particularly vulnerable to the increasing mechanization and centralization of industry during this period. For example, large paper mills often recycled their own waste, and new synthetic fibers made reusing materials impossible, which harmed SoHo’s large contingent of recycling businesses. Foreign competition also harmed business’ bottom line. ¹²

With companies leaving SoHo, artists began moving to the neighborhood’s large, inexpensive lofts. In the 1960s and 1970s, artwork was physically growing larger, and much of this outsized art was created in New York. Lofts provided enough space for even the largest works and perhaps even inspired the construction of these outsized pieces. As a New York Times reporter wrote in a 1962 feature on SoHo artists, “there seems to be some sort of mystic interaction between the size of a loft and the square footage of the work painters and sculptors turn out these days.” ¹³ Oversized windows let in natural light, and unpartitioned floors and high ceilings left room for painting, sculpture, dancing, and rehearsals.

Artists also found loft space attractive because it was inexpensive. While the average rent for a New York apartment in 1960 was $78 per month, lofts in the 1960s could rent for as little as $50 a month. ¹⁴ Furthermore, because lofts dwarfed most New York apartments, and artists were able to use their units as combined homes and studios, the real cost of loft space was much lower. As New York City, and lower Manhattan in particular, had been the site of some of the most prolific artistic activity of the postwar era, dwelling in SoHo allowed both young and more established artists to live near the people and institutions central to the city’s artistic community.

As industrial businesses left SoHo and artists moved in, a significant number of galleries also opened in the area. Before the late 1960s, most of New York’s art galleries were located near 57th Street and Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Many galleries came to SoHo for the same reason artists did: to be close to those producing art. By 1970, SoHo had an artist population in the thousands. Gallery owners and art dealers visited the area to view art in artists’ lofts and likely saw an advantage to setting up shop near up-and-coming artistic talent. This was a fertile time for art in New York City. Starting in 1945 and accelerating through the 1960s, New York emerged as the center of world artistic production, with numerous successful artists and art dealers arising from the city’s art scenes. ¹⁵

Galleries also came to SoHo for the inexpensive space, well suited for displaying contemporary art, which could be had in the neighborhood. The large interiors of SoHo’s cast iron buildings were ideal for displaying large and irregular pieces. Galleries in SoHo were also cheap to rent. For example, the staff of Reese Palley noted it had “more exhibition space than the Whitney Museum” at a much lower cost than its old location on 57th Street. ¹⁶

The rise of art galleries in SoHo was rapid and far-reaching. Starting in 1968, the New York Times began reporting regularly on SoHo gallery shows in articles about the “Downtown Scene.” While the New York press covered five major SoHo art dealers in 1970, by 1973 there were more than 80 galleries in and around SoHo. By 1979, this number rose to more than 100, and two full book-length guidebooks about them had been published. ¹⁷

Soon after they opened, SoHo galleries began to attract significant numbers of visitors. By 1969, one year after the first galleries appeared in the neighborhood, gallery director Michael Findlay observed that his business saw “the kind of numerical turnout” that people were used to seeing in more established uptown galleries. By 1971, weekend art browsers numbered in the hundreds. ¹⁸ In the beginning, these crowds consisted of collectors who were used to going the extra mile to buy work from up-and-coming artists. Yet by 1971, the SoHo Statement reported that “Saturday afternoons in SoHo have become almost a ritual—like Sundays in the park—for hundreds of uptowners who spill off the subways at Prince or Spring, bring out their handy little artmaps and begin the gallery-circuit tour.” Galleries attracted wealthy visitors from the city and suburbs, including “tour buses filled with culture hounds . . .; from Westchester and Scarsdale.” ¹⁹

Due to its mix of artists, vacant industrial space, and galleries, SoHo soon became a destination that drew visitors from across the city and beyond. Yet when one looks closer at the finances of SoHo galleries, a paradox emerges. It becomes apparent that despite drawing large numbers of visitors, many of these galleries did not sell substantial amounts of art. Moreover, even for those that generated substantial sales, purchases from actual visitors were not central to the galleries’ success.

Commercial Galleries and Distant Art Buyers

If visitors were not integral to the financial success of art galleries, how then did galleries come to support an arts infrastructure that allowed SoHo retail to thrive? The infusion of outside arts funding that allowed galleries to operate without relying on visitors for art purchases caused the growth of gentrified retail in SoHo. However, art galleries did still work to attract visitors. As Art Gallery magazine noticed in 1969, the majority of gallery visitors were not making the art purchases that kept galleries financially viable; browsers were necessary to the success of galleries. Galleries needed buyers, people who of course were “an absolute necessity” to a commercial establishment. However, they also needed “floaters,” or casual gallery visitors. By visiting the gallery and making the art for sale seem popular, or “making the scene,” floaters could increase demand for, and subsequently the price of, art. As such, floaters were “considered a necessary nuisance by most dealers.” ²⁰

As a result, as the local paper The Villager wrote, “The gallery then becomes essentially a free museum, a showcase for contemporary work, sponsored by the dealer.” ²¹ These visitors might not have purchased art in commercial galleries in large numbers, but they did spend their money in other SoHo stores and restaurants. In doing so, they allowed SoHo galleries to attract guests and helped fuel the neighborhood’s gentrification.

Thus, a natural question to ask is, Who were the buyers? Whose money allowed galleries to function as free museums, drawing audiences and potential retail customers to SoHo? First, SoHo’s commercial galleries funneled capital through the neighborhood by attracting buyers from across the country to purchase art in their establishments. SoHo was home to a substantial number of successful for-profit galleries. The most noted nexus of these galleries in SoHo was at 420 West Broadway, a single loft building where four prestigious and well-known dealers opened establishments in 1971. The building was home to outposts of established uptown galleries: Sonnabend, Andre Emmerich/Downtown, John Webber, and Leo Castelli. ²² The well-known galleries brought shows featuring big-name artists. These included exhibitions of the prominent neon sculptor Dan Flavin, who had a show at both Leo Castelli and John Webber at 420 West Broadway in 1975. Leo Castelli hosted a retrospective on Robert Rauschenberg, one of the era’s best-known artists, in 1977. ²³ During events like these, SoHo visitors could see the equivalent of high-profile museum retrospectives in the neighborhood at no charge. Established galleries also brought high volumes of art sales to SoHo. By 1976, when Leo Castelli moved his entire operation to SoHo, his business grossed more than $2.5 million a year in sales of painting and sculpture. ²⁴

A key player in SoHo’s commercial art community was the Paula Cooper Gallery, one of the first visible and highly successful venues in SoHo. The gallery’s sales were substantial. In 1968, it had gross receipts of $73,484 and a profit of $21,811. While certain artists sold works for relatively low prices, $250 or so, others sold at high prices. For example, the average price of a work by sculptor Mark DiSuervo was more than $6,000. ²⁵

Yet as the records of the Paul Cooper Gallery (and its earlier iteration, the Park Place Gallery) indicate, despite the capital generated through sales at the gallery and its visitor-friendly, casual atmosphere (Cooper prided herself on the idea that visitors did not have to whisper in the space, as they did in uptown galleries), the gallery did not rely on visitors to purchase art. Its financial model was one in which floaters were not critical to the economic success of the enterprise. Collectors, museums, academic institutions, and corporations from all over the United States made up the bulk of Paula Cooper’s clients. Of the seventy-four works purchased at the gallery in 1966, when it was located at 542 West Broadway just outside of SoHo, thirty were sold to buyers in Manhattan, and thirteen were sold to buyers from the New York suburbs. Yet buyers from the Midwest purchased twenty-two of the works, while people from the South bought six, and buyers from the West purchased three. Purchasers included individuals, such as Mrs. Hugo Sonnenschein Jr., wife of a wealthy Chicago lawyer, and corporations, such as the Central Cadillac Company of Cleveland and the Northern Trust Company of Chicago. ²⁶

Museums and other academic institutions also made up a significant part of the gallery’s clientele, again funneling outside capital through the gallery and generating economic activity in the neighborhood. The gallery sold art to the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, and Connecticut’s Larry Aldrich Museum, among others. Paula Cooper also helped broker museum commissions by artists, including a $36,500 sculpture by Forrest Myers for the Whitney Museum. College art museums, such as those at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Southern California, Oberlin College, University of Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island School of Design also purchased works from the gallery. ²⁷

In addition, foundations and government agencies served as a market for Paula Cooper art. The gallery sold an Edwin Ruda painting to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and negotiated with the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for the sale of Forrest Myers sculptures for public installation ranging in cost from $18,000 to $38,000. The Woodward Foundation and the Lannan Foundation of Chicago were buyers, and Paula Cooper worked with foundations to obtain funding for performance pieces that artists staged in the gallery. An example of this latter form of project was a theater piece by Steve Reich and William Wiley, which was a collaboration between the Paula Cooper Gallery and the School of Visual Arts, funded by the Lionel & Sylvia Bauman Foundation. ²⁸

In sum, Paula Cooper and other commercial galleries in SoHo created a situation in which artists from around the country produced art that was shown in the neighborhood but sold to a national audience. Visitors were important enough that commercial galleries worked to attract them to make the art for sale in the gallery seem popular, hip, and in demand. ²⁹ Yet casual gallery visitors themselves did not often purchase anything from commercial galleries. Commercial galleries were essential to SoHo’s development because they channeled economic activity, in the form of art purchases, through the area. Additionally, commercial galleries brought audiences that might have previously visited establishments at 57th Street in Midtown and other places throughout the city to a dense node of galleries below Houston Street. Galleries allowed SoHo to develop into a neighborhood that New Yorkers could visit as tourists, going from gallery to gallery to look at art. With neighborhood tourism increasing, visitors helped support an expanding commercial infrastructure of boutiques and restaurants without having to maintain its art galleries through purchases. It was this mix of retail and art that eventually made SoHo a model for urban development more broadly.

Sweat Equity, Government Funding, and SoHo’s Nonprofit Arts Organizations

Supplementing the contributions of commercial galleries, nonprofit arts organizations and cooperative galleries substantially expanded the SoHo art scene, drawing a larger audience to the neighborhood. SoHo’s art organizations shared an important similarity with commercial galleries: most of their income did not come from people stopping in off the street to buy art. These galleries existed as places for artists to show their own work, whether the sales generated a profit or not. Cooperative galleries were not profitable in any traditional sense, and in fact, some of these galleries specifically organized themselves outside of the profit-making world of the commercial gallery system.

The funding that allowed cooperative galleries to function came from two main sources: contributions of labor and capital from artists and government arts funding. Funds and labor—sweat equity—contributed by artist-members were an essential source of financial support for many cooperative galleries. Artists would pay an initiation fee to join a cooperative as well as regular dues covering rent and utilities. To keep their galleries open, artists contributed their own money and labor to pay rent, renovate gallery space, provide publicity for shows, and handle all aspects of administering their operations. In exchange, they would get to show their work at the gallery on a regular basis and keep any profits from sales. While a portion of the literature on gentrification focuses on the “sweaty equity” that early homesteaders put into renovating their properties, the time and labor that artists put into arts organizations also drove the process of urban change. ³⁰

Additionally, most cooperative galleries looked to government arts funding to provide support for their operations. Many cooperative galleries organized themselves into tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, qualifying them for government grants and for tax-deductible donations from corporations, foundations, and individuals. Galleries sought grants mainly from NYSCA and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). ³¹

SoHo’s nonprofit galleries were mainly cooperative and modeled after the Jane Street Gallery, founded in 1944 in Greenwich Village. At Jane Street, members paid fees to show their work and participate in the gallery’s decision-making processes. SoHo’s cooperative galleries had the same basic structure, with gallery members paying annual dues and contributing their labor for the opportunity to show their work on a regular basis. The first cooperative to open in SoHo was First Street Gallery in 1969. By 1975, SoHo contained fifteen cooperatives.

The work shown in cooperative galleries varied in quality, and the financial viability of these spaces fluctuated as well. Some of the galleries, such as 55 Mercer, SoHo 20, and A.I.R., got as much attention, and nearly as much respect, as SoHo’s commercial galleries. However, other cooperatives were not as admired by much of the art world. As the SoHo Weekly News pointed out, since artists were subsidizing cooperative galleries, the art being sold in the gallery did not have to be good enough to make people want to buy it. The paper argued, “Here we are presented with a turnabout system wherein a co-op, by virtue of an initiation fee paid by artists, may remain viable, even if none if its members sells a damn thing.” ³²

Again, cooperative galleries operated essentially as free museums that drew visitors into SoHo, allowing them to support the more traditional retail sector of shops and restaurants that would later emerge in the neighborhood. Although visitors to cooperative galleries did buy some art, and art could be purchased there for less than at commercial galleries, sales were not high. For example, at Prince Street Gallery, sales per show were usually less than $1,000, with $400 being the average, a far cry from the median of $6,000 for sales for some Paula Cooper artists. Although this was due in part to the lower cost of art at cooperatives, it also indicates that much of the audience at SoHo cooperative galleries was made up of nonbuyers. ³³

SoHo galleries benefited from a robust environment for arts funding nationally. The neighborhood’s rise as an artist colony occurred simultaneously with the establishment of NEA and with a general increase in arts funding locally and nationally as a result of the cold war and Great Society. Envisioned by President John F. Kennedy, and established by President Lyndon Johnson, NEA was expanded by President Nixon, who increased NEA funding from $7 million in 1968 to $64 million in 1974, just as SoHo was coming into its own as an art center. New York artists and institutions were very successful in obtaining federal arts funding. In fact, in some years, such as in 1967 and 1969, New York artists won most of the NEA grants (95 percent in some cases). ³⁴

During the same period, New York State also provided arts funding through NYSCA. Founded by Governor Nelson Rockefeller as a temporary state agency in 1960, NYSCA became permanent in 1965. In 1971, just as SoHo’s gallery scene was expanding, the agency’s budget increased to $20.1 million from $2.2 million the previous year due to a request of Governor Rockefeller, a longtime patron of the arts. ³⁵

The effect of government artist funding on SoHo was twofold. As Sharon Zukin has argued, arts funding given directly to artists stabilized their employment, helped them live a middle-class lifestyle, and made the idea of living like artists more appealing for the relatively affluent New Yorkers who would eventually move into SoHo lofts. ³⁶ Additionally, the government funds that cooperative galleries won helped them draw visitors and eventually supported the growth of neighborhood retail, creating a new method of urban development in the process.

Because of their reliance on government funding, cooperative galleries were particularly focused on the size of their audiences. To compete successfully for state arts dollars, they had to prove that that they were “exposing the viewing public to the most interesting and dynamic art being produced.” This meant attracting visitors. While evidence about the number of people SoHo cooperative galleries brought to the area is incomplete, data suggest that the size of their audiences was substantial. SoHo’s cooperative galleries aimed for audiences that were at least comparable with commercial establishments. Impressively, cooperative Spectrum Gallery estimated that its total audience was 60,000 in 1971–1972 and 90,000 in 1972–1973. ³⁷

An illustrative example of one of SoHo’s nonprofit galleries is A.I.R., a cooperative of twenty women that opened at 97 Wooster Street in 1972. As the gallery records indicate, the artists of A.I.R. contributed a large percentage of the money and labor necessary for the gallery’s operation. Before it opened, members spent the entire summer of 1972 renovating the space. Each contributed $120 to $150 to hire contractors and fifty hours of her own labor to improve the former machine shop that the gallery called home. The members built and painted the walls, did the wiring, and removed rusting pipes and radiators. As rent was $350, each member contributed $21 a month. In exchange, the artists had the opportunity to show their work twice per year. ³⁸

In addition, A.I.R. members provided much of the labor for operating the gallery. They hired only a part-time coordinator to represent A.I.R. to the outside world. Members did the bookkeeping, maintenance, invitations, brochures, and public relations; wrote its grant proposals; and conducted fund-raising. During shows, members were responsible for changing light bulbs, patching scuffs on the walls, sweeping floors, taking the garbage out, and keeping public and private areas orderly. The exhibiting artists were responsible for sending promotional materials to the press; putting paid and free ads in local and artistic publications; creating invitations and arranging for printing and mailing; ordering wine; preparing materials for their shows’ openings, including resumes, guest books, and price lists; and hanging and taking down all artwork. When they were not having shows, A.I.R. members were required to staff the gallery once a month. ³⁹

A.I.R. also drew substantial government arts funding. A.I.R. organized itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization; applied for and received NEA funds in 1972, the first year it opened; and continued receiving grants from NEA and NYSCA throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Amounts ranged from $3,000 from NYSCA in 1973 to $7,000 in 1974. The New York State grants covered items such as the monthly salaries for some gallery staffers, the costs of gallery supplies, and the fees paid to speakers for a Monday night lecture program. As late as 1977, A.I.R. received $15,000 in grant money, covering the majority of its yearly budget of $28,950. ⁴⁰

All told, SoHo’s cooperative galleries helped drive economic growth by bringing tourists to the neighborhood. However, art sales did not keep these enterprises solvent. Through contributions of labor and time, artists transformed empty lofts into vibrant centers for the display of art. While some undoubtedly sold pieces in these spaces, visitors could enjoy the art whether they purchased it or not, as it was government funds and the efforts of artists that kept the galleries open. In this manner, cooperative galleries transformed SoHo into a center for cultural tourism, which in turn prompted visitors to support its growing retail sector and unique mix of artists’ homes, galleries, and retail spaces.

Arts Funding, Promotion, and the SoHo Scene

Artists and local entrepreneurs used a combination of sweat equity and government funding to create a vibrant and increasingly popular arts scene in SoHo. Drawing on government funding allowed less “saleable” art forms to flourish in area cooperatives and draw audiences to SoHo. Furthermore, both artists and gallery owners used performances and festivals to draw attention to their art and political causes, creating a popular local arts scene in the process.

The SoHo art community’s rise was linked with the growing popularity and prestige of performance art, an art form that relied strongly on audience for its raison d’être. Critic RoseLee Goldberg wrote, “It was in the 1960s that an increasing number of artists turned to live performance as the most radical form of art-making, irrevocably disrupting the course of traditional art history and challenging the double-headed canon of the established media—painting and sculpture.” During this time, much contemporary art incorporated performance elements. By the 1970s, “performance art became the predominant art form of the period.” ⁴¹

Most importantly, performance art by definition required an audience, and this medium once again attracted visitors to SoHo. The “alternative spaces” where performances took place hosted events that pushed the boundaries of artistic media. SoHo was a particularly attractive place to create and display this avant-garde art, as collaboration between artists was easier within a dense artist community from which performers and audience members could be recruited. SoHo was also appealing because adaptable and open loft space uniquely suited this art form.

One noted SoHo alternative space was The Kitchen, which opened at 484 Broome Street in 1971 as an experimental exhibition center for innovative programming in video, intermedia performance, contemporary music, and dance. It was one of the first spaces to devote itself entirely to a schedule of activities that defied easy categorization by style or medium. An installation by John Sanborn was typical of The Kitchen. A fixed camera recorded two actors talking in a living room. Another camera recorded audience members entering the gallery. The two recordings were then spliced together so that it appeared that audience members were entering the drama. In addition, The Kitchen also held performances of postmodern dance and a series of concerts that NYSCA considered to be one of the most varied and informative new music series in the state. ⁴² Fittingly, The Kitchen garnered a large amount of state and federal arts funding. NEA declared that The Kitchen was a major media center and provided funding of close to $200,000 throughout the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, NEA awarded the organization upwards of $287,000 in funds per year. NYSCA also gave generously to The Kitchen. It provided $77,495 in 1978–1979 and $121,397 in 1979–1980. To supplement its success in earning government support, The Kitchen also successfully courted private donors, including individuals and foundations, raising more than $200,000 yearly by 1980. ⁴³

The Kitchen used this funding to develop programming that drew a substantial number of visitors. According to archived grant proposals made to NYSCA, its 1977–1978 video exhibition series attracted an estimated 12,000 people, while 4,000 attended and paid $6,000 in admission fees for twenty-five programs in the arts development series. The next year, The Kitchen’s fifty-six music performances averaged audiences of 100, drawing 6,600 people for thirty-five shows, while forty-five dance performances attracted about 95 visitors to the flexible theater space. Finally, The Kitchen enticed 4,000 people to film screenings during ten months, while guests logged 100 hours of private film viewing in the loft. These visitors were not just SoHo artists or others familiar with the area’s artistic offerings. As NYSCA staff noted, although “the nucleus of The Kitchen’s audience” were “artists, basically downtown people,” a study revealed, to the surprise of The Kitchen staff, that “the audience is becoming much more diversified and that many come from other parts of Manhattan as well as New Jersey.” ⁴⁴

SoHo’s art scene also included dance performances, a medium that had long attracted paying audiences in New York. When the SoHo Performing Arts Association organized a SoHo dance festival in 1977, it estimated that the number of dancers and choreographers in SoHo matched the number of painters and sculptors. Dance thrived in the neighborhood, despite the fact that it lacked the commercial appeal of other artistic media. As the SoHo Weekly News noted, “you can’t take a dance home with you the way you can a painting or sculpture—a real drawback in this cash-and-carry, art-as-status society. You can’t speculate in dance: since it can’t be owned, it can’t appreciate in value. The benefits of art-oriented commercialism of SoHo have passed the dancers by.” ⁴⁵

SoHo’s commercial galleries used performances to draw visitors and bring attention to their establishments as well as to provide a venue for artistic expression. Established commercial galleries such as Paula Cooper hosted dance recitals. Recitals were generally either free or low cost (a recital at Paula Cooper in 1976 was $2). Audiences varied but sometimes numbered more than 150 people. Dance recitals also took place at nonprofit performance spaces, including The Kitchen. The content of the performances varied widely. They could be fairly standard ballet pieces or avant-garde numbers including “solo improvisations to rock music, heavy on acrobatics” performed nude, “improvisations to whatever happens to be on a record player,” abstract works with “wailing and pot shaking,” or people taking laps around the room in the shape of numbers. ⁴⁶

World-renowned dance companies made their homes in SoHo, using the neighborhood as a base for performances that drew significant arts-funding audiences. One of the area’s most noted arts organizations was the Byrd Hoffman Foundation. The foundation was established in 1964 to showcase the experimental theater and dance of Robert Wilson, “a unique American artist of international renown.” The foundation occupied three floors of the previously mentioned building at 147 Spring Street that was split between performance space and a communal area on the ground floor. Audiences at the foundation could be large as well. For example, in 1979, six performances by Cindy Lubar-Reigenborn filled the foundation’s 125-seat second-floor theater at 80 percent capacity. That same year, a Robert Wilson production sold 70 percent of tickets to a 1,100-seat house for thirteen performances. ⁴⁷

Much of the Byrd Hoffman dance troupe’s budget was derived from government and private sources. In 1972–1973, the group raised $4,462 from individual contributions, $16,800 from foundations, $12,000 from NEA, and $19,790 from NYSCA. NYSCA also contributed $19,790 in 1973–1974. ⁴⁸ The SoHo Repertory Theater’s budget included $7,500 from NYSCA in 1978–1979 and $9,000 in 1979–1980. That year, the theater had 1,129 subscribers, and corporate support included a $1,000 grant from ConEd and $1,200 from Citibank. ⁴⁹

The local music scene also brought audiences to SoHo, with commercial galleries subsidizing some of these performances. For example, the Paula Cooper Gallery hosted chamber music recitals, including a pair of concerts by the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in early 1978. Understandably, the opportunity to see a world-renowned group in such an intimate setting for only $4 attracted quite a crowd. The SoHo Weekly News described the first of these concerts as similar to “Times Square on New Years Eve.” A later concert came close to reaching the gallery’s capacity of 300 tickets on seating that was only a “flimsy foam-rubber cushion” on a “bare wood floor.” In addition, alternative spaces, such as The Kitchen, hosted concerts, including a “concert of piano music performed by Frederic Rzewski, another piano soirée by Charlemagne Palestine, and an evening of compositions by Beth Anderson,” all within the span of five days in 1975. ⁵⁰

Visitors to SoHo could also see a variety of performances in independent jazz lofts. The term jazz loft encompassed informal gatherings in people’s loft homes as well as highly regarded dedicated spaces run by jazz legends such as Ornette Coleman. These venues attracted significant attention in the press and drew large numbers of visitors to SoHo on a regular basis. By 1977, there were nine jazz lofts in SoHo: Jerome Cooper, Environ, Charles “BoBo” Shaw, Ali’s Alley, George Lewis & Muhal, Axis in SoHo, Jazzmania, Studio Rivbea, and Coleman’s club. In some of the lofts, “some of the crowds aren’t as many as the musicians,” while at others, “it might be hard to get a seat,” especially when events such as the Newport Jazz Festival brought performers and jazz aficionados into town. Individual lofts could hold upwards of 400 performances a year. ⁵¹

Finally, publicly funded, artist-organized arts festivals combined arts funding and sweat equity into popular showcases for the local arts scene. Artists who lived in SoHo also helped bring visitors to the neighborhood through a series of art festivals beginning in the late 1960s. The first event of this nature was Ten Downtown, which SoHo artists first organized in 1968 as a tour of artists’ lofts and galleries. By 1973, Ten Downtown attracted 6,000 visitors. ⁵² On a larger scale, the SoHo Artist Association organized the yearly SoHo Artists Festival in May 1970 in conjunction with the New York City Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs. The festival was a major success, drawing more than 10,000 people, according to one estimate. ⁵³ Both of these festivals were designed in large part to help pass legislation legalizing loft residences in SoHo, but in each case, the festivals did much to increase the number of cultural tourists visiting the area.

Visitors and SoHo’s Retail Landscape

Finally, retail was able to flourish in SoHo because of the visitors that galleries and performance spaces drew into the area. As sociologist Charles Simpson observed, the major industry in SoHo quickly became the servicing of gallery crowds. ⁵⁴ In time, audiences for SoHo art supported the neighborhood’s growing urban retail infrastructure of clothing stores, interior decorating items, and restaurants. While SoHo commercial businesses initially served the area’s large artist population, they soon shifted their orientation to the gallery visitor and artistic consumer. Over time, the area’s businesses became increasingly upscale, reflecting the redevelopment and gentrification that came as a result of the infusion of capital provided by the arts, as well as gallery visitors, into the neighborhood.

SoHo’s retail redevelopment started in the late 1960s when the first art galleries joined the small number of workmen’s bars and Italian restaurants south of Houston Street. By the late 1970s, hundreds of galleries, restaurants, clothing stores, and housewares shops lined the area’s streets. SoHo’s retail milieu was reflective of both the neighborhood’s artistic redevelopment and its industrial past. The neighborhood was home to artist-run restaurants serving art patrons, shops where tourists could buy inexpensive art prints and repurposed industrial objects, furniture and home decoration items, and boutiques where the line between art and fashion was blurred.

Over time, the presence of an artist community and the availability of vacant industrial space spurred the growth of a flourishing retail district in SoHo, which the New York Times called a “Downtown Frontier of Boutiques and Studios” in 1973. When the SoHo Weekly News published its first holiday shopping guide that year, the neighborhood was already home to a wide variety of retail establishments. These included a fairly standard array of stores, such as florists, bookstores, a housewares shop, a toy store, and a health food store. The neighborhood also featured a number of businesses selling antiques, interior design products, and other “artistic” goods. There were also a number of boutiques specializing in designer clothing as well as gourmet food shops including the Cheese Store, run by Giorgio G. DeLuca, who later opened the famed Dean and DeLuca grocery. ⁵⁵

The connection between visitors to SoHo art galleries and neighborhood businesses can be seen through both contemporary discourse and the physical layout of the neighborhood. First, contemporary observers saw the connection between gallery visitors and local retail. As the local paper the SoHo Weekly News reported in 1973, as SoHo art galleries opened for the season, the neighborhood gallery scene was “crowded, colorful and progressively geared towards viewer-consumer needs.” These “viewer-consumers” could move from looking at art to browsing goods for sale or eating at a restaurant located near galleries. On a given Saturday afternoon, the most popular time for casual gallery visitors, “books and clothes” were “available close to the galleries,” and restaurants were “filled for lunch until late afternoon.” ⁵⁶

Additionally, the geography of SoHo points to a connection between art galleries and commercial businesses, as well as to the neighborhood’s ongoing deindustrialization. Commercial establishments tended to locate in areas where industrial vacancies were highest and loft space was available. As the map in Figure 1 indicates, local businesses also congregated around galleries, the anchors around which the neighborhood’s retail scene developed.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Commercial Establishments and SoHo Businesses, 1979.

The connection between the local retail and arts scenes could first be seen in the area’s earliest businesses, which included establishments such as restaurants run by and catering to artists. The restaurant most closely associated with the SoHo artist community was Food, located at 127 Prince Street. A group of artists, most prominently Gordon Matta Clark and Caroline Gooden, came together to open Food in 1971. ⁵⁷ Food was a unique restaurant owned and operated by artists, many of whom would take turns cooking in the kitchen, working in the front of the house, or running the business end of the establishment. The restaurant aimed to be a “community based business whose goal was to support and maintain the art community of downtown Manhattan.” Its founders saw Food as a community center for artists as well as a way for SoHo residents to earn money when they were not working on art. Organizers of a retrospective exhibition celebrating the restaurant estimated that 300 artists worked at Food over the course of its operation. ⁵⁸

Gordon Matta-Clark viewed the restaurant itself as a work of art. For him, cooking was a means of artistic expression. Matta-Clark explored the metaphorical intake of food in some of his art and viewed collaborating with other artists in the kitchen as part of an artistic process. He also created experimental meals, putting wiggling brine shrimp inside hard-boiled eggs, which prompted several people to leave the restaurant, and offering a “bone meal” based on dishes such as aspic and oxtail soup. After the latter meal, a local jeweler made the bones into a necklace that diners could wear home. ⁵⁹

Yet as the area’s commercial base soon shifted to cater to gallery visitors, an artistic sightseer in SoHo could eat alongside artists as well as be a consumer of art objects. Several local stores sold inexpensive artwork, including prints. Art dealers earned a moderate profit from these prints due to their low cost of production. SoHo visitors liked buying them because of their portability and low price. As the SoHo Weekly News noted, prints were “hangable above the couch and they can be had for two or three figures instead of four or five.” Well and lesser-known artists often produced prints of their work that sold for $50 to $200 through local galleries and shops. Prints were attractive to younger art buyers and those with less to invest in art. ⁶⁰

Visitors to SoHo could also purchase artistic objects that could be used in various interior design capacities. For example, at the 3 Mercer Store, SoHo visitors could buy decorative handmade levers with rocks for fulcrums, pulleys, devices to evaporate water without heat, mechanical flying birds, and apparatuses made of balsa wood for amplifying sound. At 3 Mercer, proprietor Stephan Eins took inspiration from Claes Oldenburg’s sculptures of everyday objects as well as Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades. Although artistic, the objects for sale did not cost gallery prices: items started at 75 cents. ⁶¹

In fact, even those establishments where artists once dominated the clientele found themselves oriented toward the (increasingly wealthy) gallery visitor. Even the erstwhile artist-run eatery Food became a place whose main business was serving the growing number of tourists visiting and shopping in SoHo. In 1972, the New York Times reported that “mink sheathed matrons” and visitors from the suburbs of Westchester who came to see SoHo galleries ate at the restaurant. ⁶² Food, along with the rest of the neighborhood’s dining scene, was perceived as increasingly upscale by the middle of the 1970s. In 1975 the New York Times reported that Food was serving “salads and crepes instead of okra soup and mashed eggplant” to make the establishment “attractive to suburban tourists.” By this time, Food was simply one of a number of SoHo restaurants that made the neighborhood appealing to gallery visitors as well as an increasingly large number of upper-income residents. ⁶³

Over time, SoHo’s dining establishments had fewer artistic connections and catered more directly to the wealthy residents and visitors fueling SoHo’s gentrification. Much like contemporary gentrified neighborhoods, specialty food stores were a central part of SoHo’s retail milieu. Perhaps most famously, in 1977, Cheese Shop owner Giorgio G. DeLuca joined with partner Joel Dean to open Dean and DeLuca, the now nationally famous gourmet food store, on Prince Street. ⁶⁴ In fact, by that time it was hard to eat affordably in SoHo at all. To help natives and visitors locate less pricey establishments, the SoHo Weekly News ran an article about finding cheap food options in the neighborhood. The paper suggested buying lunch at a hot dog truck or frequenting sandwich shops catering to local workers. It also listed some inexpensive Italian and Chinese restaurants, but lower-price options were harder to come by as gallery-related tourism attracted a wealthier clientele into the neighborhood. ⁶⁵

Even establishments offering artistic goods became increasingly upscale. This was particularly the case with the numerous boutiques in SoHo that sold designer clothing, the production of which required substantial artistic skill. By 1974, the number of local clothing stores increased to the point where one could speak of a “SoHo look.” SoHo boutiques frequently incorporated some form of artistic enterprise: from local artists’ designs to printing techniques to artistic influences from abroad. There were eight boutiques along West Broadway, Spring, and Prince Streets. Stores included East Bank South, a one-room shop with dresses decorating the walls instead of paintings; Kathie Keller, which sold cowboy-style shirts made of silk scarves; Knobkerry, with African-, Afghani-, and Indian-inspired fashions; Nana of SoHo, selling inexpensive photo-printed tees and French fashions; Paracelso, which featured Middle Eastern, Indian, and Oriental clothing; Tales of Hoffman/Le Grand Hotel, two boutiques in one with shoes in the front and specialty-made skirts and other fashions in the back; and Tamala, operated by two SoHo women who designed dresses upstairs from the retail space. ⁶⁶ Clothing from SoHo stores could be elevated to pieces of art. At King Knitter in SoHo close to Tribeca, customers could commission Dione King to create $200 sweaters or $75 to $100 vests. She designed hats at $15 each. At Fred Leighton’s stores on Madison Avenue and 177 MacDougal Street near SoHo, shoppers could purchase clothing made of vintage fabric as well as jewelry and antiques taken from estate sales. ⁶⁷

In this manner, artists and retail entrepreneurs created a neighborhood with a dense infrastructure of amenities, including restaurants and shops located close to artists’ homes. The mix of retail amenities in SoHo makes the neighborhood similar to many contemporary areas that have undergone gentrification. Yet it is important to remember that less than a decade before SoHo’s new retail community sprung on the scene, the area was a struggling industrial neighborhood with a growing population of talented, but not yet financially successful, artists. SoHo’s retail sector grew quickly, but its success was not anticipated or preordained.

Exporting Development in SoHo: The Growth of Gentrified Retail

In some ways, SoHo resembles many of the artist neighborhoods prominent throughout American and world history. Much as was the case in Paris, London, and San Francisco, the presence of artists in SoHo eventually drew the middle class into the area. Yet no previously existing bohemian enclave has matched the retail development that took place in SoHo. No one talks about the boutiques of Montmartre or the organic restaurants of Greenwich Village. There is a reason for this, as the link between culture and the specific type of consumption that exists in gentrified neighborhoods to this day was created in SoHo in the 1960s and 1970s.

Several conditions were necessary for the growth of SoHo’s gallery and retail sector. First, artists, galleries, and businesses needed affordable real estate, which they were able to find in SoHo due to the neighborhood’s ongoing deindustrialization. Second, they needed customers, which local galleries attracted in the form of artistic tourists. Local performers and performance artists, who by definition needed audiences for their works, also supplemented this customer base by drawing crowds. To fund this tourist infrastructure, the neighborhood relied on outside capital, a third condition contributing to the growth of SoHo’s retail sector. This outside capital came from distant art buyers and government arts funding. Finally, when outside capital was not present, sweat equity, in the form of contributions of time and capital from artists themselves, allowed for galleries to draw artistic tourists to SoHo, fueling the neighborhood’s retail growth.

The method of urban development that artists and business owners created in SoHo has become so ubiquitous in large part because it was exportable. The development of a residential and commercial neighborhood based on the arts likely could not have occurred anyplace but New York, the center of the art world and magnet for artistic talent, arts funding, and art dealers. Yet SoHo galleries did not need famous artists, or even significant art sales, to attract visitors. SoHo galleries drew tourists to the area through a dense collection of lesser-known artists. Any city can provide incentives for artists and galleries to locate in neighborhoods lacking in investment. They do not have to be particularly well known, nor do there have to be a lot of them. A neighborhood can undergo gentrification as long as a gallery or two can open and remain viable. These art galleries can then inspire people to visit the area as tourists. If they remain successful, restaurants and shops may arrive to cater to these visitors, and a SoHo-type retail scene can develop. Because of the success of SoHo, investors have come to view galleries as a sign of future development. In fact, it is because of SoHo that, as scholars have noted, the arts have become a signal to invest in gentrified neighborhoods.

Finally, the history of SoHo can help bridge the gap between an urban history focused on crisis and suburbanization and other fields that concentrate on the nature of contemporary gentrification. The neighborhood’s development points to the origins of many aspects of gentrified neighborhoods that scholars have recently studied: from the area’s variety of restaurants, specialty food shops, design stores, and boutiques to the mix of chic retail and cultural consumption. However, SoHo can also help expand our understanding of gentrified retail. While retail had a symbolic meaning in SoHo, as several of the scholars cited previously have noted, the neighborhood’s history demonstrates that commerce also had a specific practical function in the area: helping it develop into a gentrified neighborhood.