ABSTRACT
For Le Corbusier, the lower-scale developments between the skyscrapers of Wall Street and those of Midtown Manhattan were too mundane, too ordinary to be of any interest. Yet for many people these days they represent the essence of what makes life worth living in New York. For they contain, among other things, Little India, Greenwich Village, the Ukrainian East Village, SoHo (South of Houston), Little Italy, Chinatown and other ethnic districts which, whilst generally small in scale, are immensely diversified in character. For in addition to those which gained their names from certain ethnic groups there are areas too where writers, traditionally, have congregated (Greenwich Village), and, more recently, artists (in SoHo), not to mention the galleries where their work is displayed. Indeed the cast-iron buildings of Bogardus and others, with their great open loft spaces, have proved eminently suitable for their use. And as SoHo and The Village became too expensive for another generation of artists, they colonized that area of the Lower East Side, which, for their purposes, they call TriBeCa-the Triangle below Canal Street.
