Loft Living BEFORE it Became Fashionable

Remember the area below Houston Street before it became known as "SoHo?" Essentially, the area was full of loft buildings built with cast iron frames and intended for light industry. But, as manufacturing jobs started leaving our town in the 60's and 70's, there was a great deal of empty space in these structures.

At the same time, artists, seeking cheap rents and large spaces to do their work, started renting lofts in areas such as SoHo. Forget the pictures out of Architectural Digest or Metropolitan Home; loft buildings were anything but "luxury" housing! Security was poor, the elevators (when the worked) were typically designed for freight and not people, and the buildings were often poorly-maintained. Since many such apartments were not in compliance with the Fire Code and other regulations, landlords knew that their tenants would not be likely to complain about poor conditions.

It was not uncommon to find ancient fixtures in these lofts. My friend Janice had such a space on 30th Street in which the toilet was of the type in which a tank was mounted near the ceiling, and one flushed it by pulling a chain. Ted, who had a loft in TriBeCa, didn't even have a bathroom in his apartment. There was a single toilet for the floor at the end of a long hall. Still, he loved his apartment, which had about a dozen windows overlooking the Hudson.

As with the Village, areas where artists congregated soon became fashionable, and the yuppies and their old-money counterparts soon sought out loft space for themselves. The landlords, recognizing that investment bankers could pay a lot more for an apartment than artists like my friend Miguel (who had to rely upon Food Stamps to eat), began renovating their buildings, turning them into "luxury" rentals and coops. The odder the surroundings, the hipper they thought the place would be. For instance, when the old Ex-Lax factory on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn was turned into coops, the management kept the company name above the doorway, and you would even find real estate ads for "The Ex-Lax Coops." Some landlords resorted to heavy pressure tactics to remove the original tenants in their buildings. Ted fought with his landlord for years, and frequently went without heat or hot water. One winter it got so cold in his loft that he spent several nights in a City shelter for homeless people. Eventually, I am happy to report, Ted won his legal battles, and the building owner renovated his apartment for him.

Of course, we know what eventually happened. As housing prices in loft communities soared, artists had to move further and further away in order to find affordable space. A new loft community would form, and soon after the Yuppies would arrive, causing the whole cycle to repeat itself again.