ABSTRACT
T he idea of SoHo as an artists’ hothouse first enteredgeneral consciousness in newspaper reports about art exhibitions and then in slick magazine articles usually featuring loft interiors before it appeared in films. The bibliography to Seeman and Siegfried’s SoHo (1978) mentions New York Times articles by its art critic Grace Glueck in 1969 and 1970 and then two in 1971. Life magazine, then more prominent than later, had a five-page spread titled “Living Big in a Loft” in its issue of March 27, 1970. “Behind these grubby façades lurks an artists’ colony,” gushed the anonymous writer. “Sixteen-foot ceilings, 45-foot rooms, and community spirit.” Charles R. Simpson records the alarm of SoHo’s pioneers: “It was a house-beautiful spread [that] blew our cover, so there was no point in laying low. A Village person did the research, and we couldn’t talk them [sic] out of it.” Not until 1970 did articles about SoHo appear in the Village Voice, typically looking more north than south and thus deprecating the alternative neighborhood much as it had deplored the East Village a few years before.
