80o. SoHo Historic District

A.K.A.: SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District
Location: roughly bounded by West Broadway, Houston, Crosby, and Canal Streets
Built: from early 1800s to today; most cast-irons date from 1870s
Architects: multiple
National Register Number: 78001883
Listed: June 29, 1978
Visited: June 21, 24, and 26, and August 8, 2008
Additional Information: LPC Landmark Designation Report



A wall of cast-iron--with a curve.

Some of my guidebooks mention that the Gunther Building (Griffith Thomas, 1872) was built for William H. Gunther of C.G. Gunther's Sons, perhaps the pre-eminent furrier of New York City in the 19th century. What they don't mention is its connection to a mayor of New York City. Charles Godfrey Gunther was the oldest of C.G. Gunther's sons and part of the family business (which occupied 502-504 Broadway for a time). A Copperhead elected at the tail-end of a Civil War he opposed, he--rather ironically--foiled a Confederate plot to burn the city down, and, less than a year later, stood by as Abraham Lincoln lay in state at City Hall after his assassination. This posthumous bio says he "attended strictly to his private business" after his 1864-1865 term, which says to me it's possible he was still part of C.G. Gunther's Sons when the Broome Street location was completed in 1872.



Other than the way it dominates the streetscape, the most striking thing about the building is that one of its bays--windows included--curves to meet the corner of Broome and Greene Streets. The second-story bay is capped with a pediment telling future generations, even those with no clue to its significance, that this is the "GUNTHER BUILDING," damnit. Apparently there were once life-sized statues on the pedestals at the sides.



The Gunther Building's partner-in-crime next door, 477-479 Broome Street (Elisha Shiffen, 1873), was yet another home to SoHo silks. But at time, the Cheney Brothers were the Magilla Gorilla of all American silk operations, with The New York Times describing their Connecticut factories as the places where "American dress silks were first manufactured in any large quantity"; Moses King's 1892 Handbook describes the company as "outranking all others in America."

After the Industrial Revolution completely streamlined silk production, demand for the material sunk thanks to competition from synthetic materials like nylon. The Cheney Brothers lingered around and shriveled until they were purchased by the J.P. Stevens company in 1955--the same company behind the story of Norma Rae.

If you were wondering--and I'm sure you were--Dick Cheney is at best only distantly related to the Cheney Brothers. As far as I can tell, anyway.

80g. SoHo Historic District

A.K.A.: SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District
Location: roughly bounded by West Broadway, Houston, Crosby, and Canal Streets
Built: from early 1800s to today; most cast-irons date from 1870s
Architects: multiple
National Register Number: 78001883
Listed: June 29, 1978
Visited: June 21, 24, and 26, 2008
Additional Information: LPC Landmark Designation Report



The New York Times, 1875:

We certainly owe it to the well=known house of [D.] Appleton & Co. that it is now possible to get American books which, in respect to typography, paper, and illustrations, are in all respects equal to the best works turned out from British houses...It is the simple truth to say that no American firm could, or at any rate did, attempt to rival the best works of both London and Edinburgh till within the past ten years. In that period there has been an immense advance in American printing, and no house has done more in this forward movement than that of [D.] Appleton & Co."

(An aside: when did it become redundant to assert American quality in this fashion? When--if ever--will we stop affecting surprise when China or India equals or excels in something we Americans assume America is the best at?)

So, D. Appleton & Co. Along with limitless vistas of the forgotten, they were responsible for the memoirs of Matthew C. Perry, William Tecumseh Sherman, and William H. Seward; and, heading the charge for native intellectual respectability, served as the American publishers of such eminent Victorians as Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Lyell, and--most monumentally--Charles Darwin. The evidence allows for no easy conclusion, but their neo-Renaissance office at 443-445 Broadway (Griffith Thomas, 1860) may be where On the Origin of Species was first published in the United States. It is a handsome focal point for in an intellectual revolution.



I might as well explain why I haven't talked about SoHo's cast-irons yet. I'm covering structures in rough chronological order, from the surviving Greek Revivals to the 21st century invading species; we're at about the early 1860s and the most interesting cast-irons come a touch later. (The exception is what's maybe the most famous thing in all of SoHo, E.V.Haughwout Building of 1857, but as it was landmarked separately, it'll be covered separately.) 18 Mercer (John Kellum, 1861) is an interesting cast-iron from this time, perhaps only for accidental reasons: a mossy green in contrast to the white and ivories throughout SoHo, and stripped of nearly all its ornament (no column bases, and only two capitals left), it is an unwitting precursor to Ian Schrager's 40 Bond Street. A shame about the hideous tacked-on sixth floor, though.