Cast Iron Legacy Underlies SoHo’s Architecture, Character

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a&d Cast Iron Legacy Underlies SoHo’s Architecture, Character

by Marc Gordon, AIA, 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 city’s population grew in the mid-18th century and progress moved north, development began to take over and with it, the construction of Federal and Greek revival style row houses that led to the neighborhood’s middle-class character.

It wasn’t long before Manhattan’s burgeoning shopping, hotel, and entertainment businesses defined the district and with it, the development of more substantial buildings. SoHo became the early home of retailers like Tiffany

A Long Island Iron Works foundry plaque

Marc Gordon, AIA, LEED® AP BD+C, partner with architecture, design, and planning firm Spacesmith Photography by Marc Gordon, courtesy of Spacesmith A Heuvelman & Co. foundry plaque

& Co. and Lord & Taylor. Broadway boasted theaters, music halls, and bars, while side streets were dotted with less respectable establishments. The city’s first red light district took hold around Greene and Mercer Streets.

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a&d Changes in the neighborhood’s residential quality had its middle-class moving uptown, and by the end of the Civil War, a need for larger industrial structures followed. An influx of factories, mills, and warehouses sprouted up. For many buildings, façades made of cast iron were cheaper and quicker to build than the typical masonry construction of the time.

Cast Iron Rises in Popularity Local foundries that fabricated the castings often were in proximity to areas where coal and iron could be unloaded from ships docked in the East and Hudson Rivers, and close to SoHo, easing delivery and construction. Among these enterprises were Ætna Iron Works, James L. Jackson Iron Works, Badger’s Architectural Iron Works, Long Island Iron Works, S.E. Ferdon Iron Works, and Cornell Iron Works, which remains in business to this day. While many foundry catalogues offered stock building elements that streamlined the design process, noted architects like Henry Fernbach, Ernest Flagg, Griffith Thomas, John B. Snook, John Kellum, and Richard Morris Hunt custom-designed cast iron buildings for their clients.

Many appreciated that cast iron allowed for larger window openings than masonry construction did, enabling more natural light to penetrate inside, an important advantage before electrification. It also afforded more open floor space, benefitting factory equipment arrangement and storage areas.

New York City’s earliest complete cast iron building façade dates to 1849. Introduced by the recognized pioneer of cast iron architecture, James Bogardus, The Edgar Laing Stores in the Washington Market District served as the prototype for all cast iron buildings that followed, as it was the first self-supporting, multi-story structure with iron walls. Although the building gained landmark status in 1970 by the

NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, it was dismantled and stored for subsequent reconstruction due to urban renewal and redevelopment of the area. The pieces, however, were stolen and likely sold for scrap metal.

Molds for cast iron elements were made from wood patterns pressed into sand to form a negative casting.

Ornate detailing on a capital in SoHo

A capital decorated with scrollwork detailing

After being filled with molten iron that had cooled, the molds were broken apart and the casting was removed, smoothed, primed, and then shipped to its destination. Many cast iron façades were designed in a mix of popular neo-Grec, Italianate, Renaissance Revival, and French Second Empire styles.

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A cast iron building located at 427 Broadway in SoHo.

Design details in cast iron

Not only was cast iron produced faster than cutting and carving stonework, but customized and elaborate designs could also be easily reproduced. Painted castings mimicked masonry façades, and new castings could be easily made from existing patterns as replacements for damaged pieces. Other advantages were that a façade could be disassembled and reassembled at a different location, and the elements were lighter than masonry, making them easier to ship and erect.

A forerunner of the skyscraper, cast iron buildings were a precursor to curtain wall construction, standardized prefabricated building elements, and repeating façade bays. In fact, the world’s first public passenger elevator, installed by Elisha Otis in SoHo’s E.V. Haughwout Department Store, was in a cast iron building.

A stylized leaf motif in cast iron

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An address plaque featuring the number 50

Reign of Cast Iron Jeopardized While cast iron buildings were characterized as incombustible, their unprotected wood floor joists and girders were susceptible to fire. Cast iron also became brittle when subjected to water from fire hoses during a fire.

After a devastating 1958 conflagration on Wooster Street, the FDNY commissioner at the time, Edward Cavanagh, dubbed the neighborhood “Hell’s Hundred Acres.” The golden era of cast iron architecture was relatively short-lived, spanning only a few decades. Many industrial businesses migrated out of the neighborhood after the downturn of urban manufacturing following World War II. On top of that, Robert Moses’ 1960s proposed highway project, the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX)

An address plaque with the number 81

which was slated to cut through the heart of SoHo, nearly sealed the fate of the neighborhood. Activist community groups, led by Jane Jacobs and Margot Gayle, helped defeat the proposed project, and, with preservation groups’ contributions, such as the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture, a large portion of SoHo was designated as an historic district by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1973 and as a national historic landmark in 1978.

Artists began occupying the neighborhood’s abandoned industrial lofts in the 1960s, attracted by the large open floor plates, high ceilings, and enormous windows, which were ideal setups as live-work studios. The buildings, however, were zoned for commercial and manufacturing uses and their occupancy technically illegal,

leading the artists to form The Artists Tenants Association that petitioned for and won live-work occupancy in nonresidential zoned areas. Galler-ies soon emerged, helping transform SoHo into the city’s premier art district, most notably in the 1990s and 2000s.

Since then, high-end boutiques and restaurants have taken over and many artist’s spaces have been gentrified into million-dollar residential lofts.

While New York’s neighborhoods are ever changing, SoHo’s unique heritage will forever cement its iconic status as the world’s largest architectural cast iron district.  Marc Gordon, AIA, is a partner with architecture, design, and planning firm Spacesmith.