SoHo Memory Project

It chronicles the neighborhood's evolution, charting cycles of development and placing current-day SoHo in the context of New York City's history.

[1] Founded by Yukie Ohta in 2011, the project began as a blog and has developed into a vast collection of stories told via conventional and unconventional media, including a digital archive of documents, photographs, videos, oral histories, objects, and ephemera.

That is part of what makes it such an important place to document and preserve according to Yukie Ohta, the SoHo Memory Project's founder, who says: “‘New York changes so much, it’s like instant nostalgia.

It became home to high-end retailers such as Lord & Taylor, Arnold Constable & Company, and Tiffany & Co., which were followed by theaters and upscale hotels such as the St.

It remained a thriving industrial neighborhood until upheaval in the post WWII period, when textile manufacturers moved to the South, leaving many buildings empty.

[7] In the late 1950s, artists in search of affordable studio space began to move into the neighborhood, in defiance of zoning laws that disallowed the buildings for residential use.

[8] Warhol, Haring, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Basquiat—the names of (now) art world luminaries show up constantly in the SoHo Memory Project archives.

[10] Much of the artwork produced in this period was ephemeral, experiential, or poorly preserved, so it has been the project of many archivists and art historians to recover and document what they can.

The SoHo Memory Project archive contains photographs of the renovation process and hand-written notes that document the informal nature of tenancy and cooperative building maintenance in this period.

There was no heat, there were no amenities— but there was lots of space.”[12] These renovated lofts with improvisational electrical work and slapdash plumbing are now some of the most desirable and expensive pieces of real estate in New York City.

In opposition, Finch founded Artists Against the Expressway, where she was joined by future art world luminaries such as Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman and Frank Stella, among others.

[20] Funded by a Kickstarter campaign,[21] the mobile historical society or pop-up museum comprised a folding wooden cabinet on wheels.

There was also a smell station: jars which recreated the aromas of a leather tannery, a commercial bakery on Prince St., and a pepper factory at Broome Street and W Broadway.

[2] The pop-up traveled between neighborhood art institutions, including the Judd Foundation and the Drawing Center, and it was displayed at block parties and workshops.

Growing out of an in-person tour Ohta occasionally led, the walk includes iconic spaces such as the Judd Foundation, Housing Works Bookstore and Vesuvio Bakery.

[12] In 2018 the SoHo Memory Project consulted on Gucci’s Wooster St. space, a bookstore and screening room that celebrates the creative legacy of the neighborhood.