The Art Scene in Soho in the 1980s by Laura Tucker, author of All the Greys on Greene Street
Art in SoHo in the 1980s by Laura Tucker Olympia, the main character of my novel All the Greys on Greene Street , is an artist. Sometimes her art is a delight, and sometimes it’s a source of frustration, but it is a constant companion—it is how she sees the world. That’s one the reasons I set the book in the SoHo neighborhood of New York in the early 1980s. It was one of the most exciting creative hubs of the twentieth century. When artists first started moving into SoHo in the 1960s, it was an abandoned warehouse district known by firefighters as Hell’s Hundred Acres. It was dirty and dangerous and desolate, especially at night, when the trucks left and the factory workers went home. But it was cheap, and enormous windows flooded the industrial spaces with natural light. The lofts were vast—Olympia learns to ride a bike in her family’s loft—so artists could work on huge canvases and enormous sculptures, and collaborate with dancers and musicians. The...
