1970s
I lived in a loft on Kenmare Street and spent many weekends wandering through SoHo enjoying the architecture. I had taken a course on American Architecture with a 19th century specialist while a grad student in Iowa and was thrilled to walk the quiet streets among those marvelous buildings.
Graduate student
The quiet, the building facades in the sunlight, the cobbled streets and the sound of jazz swirling here & there. A magical timewarp with the 19th & 20th centuries melding together!
No grocery store except for the Pioneer T-bone in Little Italy. Fresh fruit – fuggedaboudit!
The insane fireworks on July 4th put on by an ad hoc groups of locals in the center of the street
The rent was going up & my cousin who lived n Brooklyn said rent was really cheap there. Been in Brooklyn ever since.
I hate the way money has changed things. I don’t mind that new people come and even new buildings, but the people who come now don’t care about urban history, the people who lived there before them, much less the Common Good. They have no soul.