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A SoHo and
TriBeCa Walking Tour
Starting at Houston (pronounced how-ston) Street, walk south down
Broadway, stopping to browse the stores and vendor stands between
Houston and Prince streets. The sole remaining museum on the block is
the New Museum of Contemporary Art, devoted exclusively to living
artists. Within the Prada store at 575 Broadway, Dutch architect Rem
Koolhaas has created a high-tech setting for the Italian house of
fashion. Several art galleries share these blocks as well, most notably
at 568 Broadway, which houses 10 galleries, and the trendy Armani
Exchange store on the ground level.
Just south of Prince Street, 560 Broadway on the east side of the block
is another popular exhibit space, home to a dozen or so galleries.
Across the street at No. 561, Ernest Flagg's 1904 Little Singer Building
shows the final flower of the cast-iron style, with wrought-iron
balconies, terra-cotta panels, and broad expanses of windows.
One block south of the Little Singer Building, between Spring and Broome
streets, a cluster of lofts that were originally part of the 1897 New
Era Building share an art nouveau copper mansard at No. 495. At the
northeast corner of Broadway and Broome Street is the Haughwout
Building, a restored classic of the cast-iron genre.
At the southeast corner of Broadway and Broome Street, the former
Mechanics and Traders Bank (486 Broadway) is a Romanesque and Moorish
revival building with half-round brick arches.
If you have youngsters in tow, head east on Grand Street two blocks to
the Children's Museum of the Arts, where the interactive exhibits
provide a welcome respite from SoHo's mostly grown-up pursuits.
Otherwise, walk west on Grand Street three short blocks to discover
several of SoHo's better exhibition spaces clustered on the south end of
Greene and Wooster streets near Grand and Canal streets. These include
Deitch Projects (76 Grand St.), the Drawing Center (35 Wooster St.), and
Spencer Brownstone (39 Wooster St.).
From here you may continue north on Wooster Street for Prince Street
shops or first head east one block to Greene Street, where cast-iron
architecture is at its finest. The block between Canal and Grand streets
represents the longest row of cast-iron buildings anywhere.
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Handsome as they are,
these buildings were always commercial, containing stores and light
manufacturing firms, principally in the textile trade. (Notice the iron
loading docks and the sidewalk vault covers that lead into basement
storage areas.)
Two standout buildings on Greene Street are the so-called Queen of
Greene Street and the King of Greene Street. Even the lampposts on
Greene Street are architectural gems: note their
turn-of-the-20th-century bishop's-crook style, adorned with various
cast-iron curlicues from their bases to their curved tops.
Continue south on West Broadway to the blocks between Spring and Broome
streets to one of the area's major art galleries, the immense OK Harris
(383 West Broadway). Stay on West Broadway on the west side of the
street and proceed south; between Grand and Canal streets stands the
SoHo Grand Hotel.
Greene Street between Prince and Spring streets is notable for the SoHo
Building (Nos. 104-110); towering 13 stories, it was the neighborhood's
tallest building until the SoHo Grand Hotel went up in 1996. At Prince
Street, walk one block west to Wooster Street, which between Prince and
Spring is a retail paradise.
Like a few other SoHo streets, Wooster still has its original Belgian
paving stones. Also in this vicinity is one of Manhattan's finest
photography galleries, Howard Greenberg (120 Wooster St.) and the Dia
Center for the Arts' New York Earth Room, a must-see reminder of art
from SoHo's early days.
From Wooster Street, continue one block west on Prince Street to SoHo's
main shopping drag, West Broadway. Although many big-name galleries such
as Castelli and Sonnabend have moved uptown, there are still holdouts
worth seeing, among them, Franklin Bowles (431 West Broadway) and Nancy
Hoffman (429 West Broadway).
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TriBeCa
From the SoHo Grand Hotel, follow West Broadway south to Canal Street,
the official boundary between SoHo and TriBeCa. Continue down West
Broadway. Between White and Franklin streets, stop to marvel at the
life-size iron Statue of Liberty crown rising above the kitschy
white-tile entrance to El Teddy's (219 West Broadway), a popular Mexican
restaurant.
Continuing south on West Broadway to Duane Street, you'll pass Worth
Street, once the center of the garment trade and the 19th-century
equivalent of today's 7th Avenue. Turn right on Duane Street to Hudson
Street and you'll find the calm, shady Duane Park. Walk one block north
on Hudson Street. On the right-hand side you'll see the art deco Western
Union Building at No. 60, where 19 subtly shaded colors of brick are
laid in undulating patterns.
The area to the west (left), near the Hudson River docks, was once the
heart of the wholesale food business. Turn off Hudson Street onto quiet
Jay Street and pause at narrow Staple Street, whose green pedestrian
walkway overhead links two warehouses. Also gaze up Harrison Street
toward the ornate old New York Mercantile Exchange.
If you continue west on Jay Street, you'll pass the loading docks of a
100-year-old food wholesaler, Bazzini's Nuts and Confections, where an
upscale retail shop peddles nuts, coffee beans, and candies; there are
also a few tables where you can rest and have a snack. The entrance is
on Greenwich Street.
Just north of Bazzini's, at the intersection of Harrison and Greenwich
streets, is a surprising row of early-19th-century town houses lining
the side of Independence Plaza, a huge high-rise apartment complex. The
three-story redbrick houses were moved here from various sites in the
neighborhood in the early 1970s.
Two blocks north on Greenwich Street, at Franklin Street, is the TriBeCa
Film Center, owned by Robert De Niro. Two blocks south of Jay Street on
Greenwich Street lies 2½-acre Washington Market Park, a landscaped oasis
that has great playground equipment for children. At the corner of the
park, turn right on Chambers Street, heading west toward the Hudson
River. At the end of the block, cross the overpass across the West Side
Highway and you'll find yourself in front of the huge Stuyvesant High
School building.
Behind the school lies the north end of The Parks of Battery Park City,
which has nearly 30 acres of open spaces, including sculpture
installations and an esplanade.
SoHo
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East Village- Lower East Side
Walking Tour /
6th
Avenue and West walking /
Washington Square Area
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A
Greenwich Village Walking Tour /
A SoHo and TriBeCa Walking
Tour /Guggenheim Museum SoHo,
Museum for African Art /
Museum of Contemporary Art, Prince St and Canal St |
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