Cast Iron Legacy Underlies SoHo’s Architecture, Character
by Mark Gordon, AIA, LEED® AP BD+C, partner at Spacesmith In the 18th and 19th centuries cast iron was used in bridge construction, for beams and columns, and as exterior decorative elements. But an innovative use of cast iron was developed in New York City by incorporating it into the design of building façades, and while cast iron buildings are scattered throughout New York City’s lower Manhattan, one neighborhood in particular, SoHo, embodies the largest collection of full and partial cast iron buildings in the world, with about 250 existing examples. An amalgam, SoHo, which stands for “SOuth of HOuston, was first coined by city Planner Chester Raskin in a 1963 city planning report. Back in the 17th century, this young neighborhood consisted of New York’s first free black settlement. Following Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s nephew, Nicholas Bayard’s, 1660s acquisition of the land, the area remained largely rural. But as the …
Log in to Continue Reading
