1970 – 1978
71 Thompson St./South Village
Graduate Student to College Professor
The energy of community-building; the transformation of an urban space.
The emergence of a community that was on track to swallow my Italian American community whole.
My first “contact” with SoHo which wasn’t “SoHo” at the time. It was the Fall of 1970. I was 21 and just moved into an apartment on Thompson Street between Spring and Broome. This was my second stint in the neighborhood. My mother’s family came from Italy to the south Village in 1882 from the region of Basilicata, Italy. I was 4th generation, baptized at St. Anthony’s and attended St. Alphonsus school on West Broadway before my parents, my grandmother, my sister and I moved out to a tract development in the suburbs. One of my aunts helped me to secure a rent controlled apartment when I began graduate study at The New School which eventually led to a PhD in sociology. My doctoral dissertation was a study of the Village Italian American community. Published as a book in 1984, it addressed the Italian neighborhood’s relationship with the burgeoning artists’ community (the latter was the focus of a community study by another New School sociologist, Charles Simpson). In the Fall of 1970, my aunt encouraged me to attend a meeting of local artists concerned with civic issues. It was hosted by Julie Judd in a building owned by she and her husband, Donald Judd. At one point, I looked behind me to see the figure who I later came to recognize as a leading American sculptor, standing apart in the rear of the large loft space. To this day, I reflect on what he thought of the politics of the artists that paved the way to the artists community.
Sorry. I never identified with SoHo. The locus of my identity was, and still is, the Italian American community. I even internalized the tension that existed with SoHo which effectively submerged an Italian neighborhood.
I enjoy the blog. Thank you.