New York Public Library, The

Today marks ten years to the day that I founded SoHo Memory Project on January 1, 2011. Many of you have been with me since day one and many, many others joined us along the way. What began as a blog I thought only my mom would read has turned into a nonprofit organization with an archive that has been promised to the New York Historical Society. Together we built our collective memory of SoHo, past and present, grit and glory, from scratch.

On Monday, October 23, 2017, I led a Community Conversation at the Mulberry Street branch of the New York Public Library on “SoHo in Transition.” It was the first in a series of three such conversations to take place this fall that examine SoHo’s past, present, and future.

On January 1, 2011, I started writing this blog without a clue about where it would lead. I began almost grudgingly, thinking that someone ought to be preserving SoHo's important and endlessly interesting history, but not me. Five years later, I am very happy that I took the plunge, as this project has only reinforced my conviction that preservation in all of its forms is not only important, but essential to how we situate ourselves in the present and how we envision our future.