ABSTRACT
In the years that followed WWII, New York was the creative capital of the world, home to many world-class museums including the Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum and The Whitney, and a wealth of art galleries, publishers and record companies. In 1948 the author E.B. White wrote, in an essay about the city he loved, “The city is always full of young worshipful beginners-young actors, young aspiring poets, ballerinas, painters, reporters, singers”.1 But by the 1970s, ‘white ight’ to the suburbs had left the city in civic and economic decline, during which time New York entered a period of transition, toward a new post-Fordian service economy. Yet, it was during this period of economic uncertainty that the city’s artist community thrived in low-rent abandoned downtown workshops and factories, in the sister neighborhoods that would become dubbed Tribeca (‘TRIangle BElow CAnal St’) bordered roughly by Broadway to the East and Chambers Street to the south and SoHo (“SOuth of HOuston Street”).
