SoHo Artists Association

Robert Weinreb, a SoHo old-timer, has spent the past 50+ years photographing his environs and the world, most significantly the Himalayas, documenting changes in the region over a 30-year period. The following is a sampling of Weinreb’s SoHo photos, taken in the early 1970s. They capture the moment in time when SoHo’s buildings housed a mix of artist studios and factories and the streets were both gritty and glorious. Read more>>

If you live anywhere in lower Manhattan, no doubt you have heard about the Envision SoHo/NoHo planning process, which aims “to examine key land use and zoning issues in the two neighborhoods and seek community input to develop strategies to both honor SoHo/NoHo’s history and ensure the continued vitality of the neighborhoods.” SoHo is historically an artists’ neighborhood, so one would assume “community input” includes input from artists, but this is not the case. There are no artists in the Process Advisory Group that is to "help develop recommendations to inform the future of SoHo and NoHo." This must change if the planning process is to be legitimate.

If you haven’t heard yet, SoHo has a new “neighborhood improvement” group, an all-volunteer-run nonprofit called CleanUpSoHo dedicated to keeping SoHo streets clean. I, for one, have seen a huge improvement lately.