#232 The Story of SoHo

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2017

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Picture the neighborhood of SoHo (that’s right, "South of Houston") in your head today, and you might get a headache. Crowded sidewalks on the weekend, filled with tourists, shoppers and vendors, could almost distract you from SoHo’s unique appeal as a place of extraordinary architecture and history. On this podcast we present the story of how a portion of “Hell’s Hundred Acres” became one of the most famously trendy places in the world. In the mid 19th century this area, centered along Broadway, became the heart of retail and entertainment, department stores and hotels setting up shop in grand palaces. (It also became New York’s most notorious brothel district). The streets between Houston and Canal became known as the Cast Iron District, thanks to an exciting construction innovation that transformed the Gilded Age. Today SoHo contains the world’s greatest surviving collection of cast-iron architecture. But these gorgeous iron tributes to New York industry were nearly destroyed – first by rampant fires, then by Robert Moses. Community activists saved these buildings, and just in time for artists to move into their spacious loft spaces in the 1960s and 70s. The artists are still there of course but these once-desolate cobblestone streets have almost unrecognizably changed, perhaps a victim of its own success. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of the Bowry Boys is brought to you by Open Campus, the new school's progressive approach to continuing education.
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0:32.0	Today's show is also brought to you by Revisionist History, Season 2.
0:36.0	From Malcolm Gladwell and Panoply Media, check out the new season of Revisionist History, a podcast that looks at events from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time.
0:48.0	This season will explore a murder trial from the Jim Crow South, telling the story of a terrorist who had a change of heart.
0:56.0	There will be talk of French fries, the saddest song in the world, making mischief, and putting crazy theories to the test.
1:04.0	I could go on. It's going to be a wild ride.
1:08.0	Listen to Revisionist History, Season 2, in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:15.0	Episode 232 of the Bowry Boys, the story of Soho.
1:21.0	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
1:23.0	Hey.
1:24.0	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
1:27.0	Join us for as little as $1 a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
1:35.0	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
1:39.0	And this is Tom Myers.
1:41.0	Tom, it's great to see you. We've been away for a few weeks, but we're back. The team is back together again.
1:47.0	And that's right. I think, Greg, that a couple of shows ago, you may have mentioned you dangled before the listener of the fact that I was gone for you said a good reason.
1:57.0	Yes, indeed.
1:59.0	And now I think I could perhaps divulge that good reason a few months ago, back in May, my husband, Guillaume and I were fortunate enough to adopt a little baby.
	...

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