Today’s Subject and Yesterday’s Object: Yukie Ohta in Conversation

My first encounter with Yukie Ohta was in October 2014. New York was bitterly cold, and I was still very much a newcomer to the city. I remember wondering if SoHo embraced everything new—myself included. During one of my walks, on Mercer Street, I noticed a small, old metal box with a glass pane. Inside was an ad promoting the SoHo Memory Project. The poster featured a young Yukie Ohta with her mother and sister, captured on a typical 1970s New York street corner. Below the image was an early description of her archival project. As a born-and-raised resident of the cast-iron neighborhood, Yukie had a deep desire to preserve SoHo as it was rapidly changing. At the time, I was in residence and conducting research in what was one of the last “Fluxhouses” on Broadway—a term coined by George Maciunas, the so-called “father of SoHo.” Yukie helped me access documents, stories, and memories that provided such a unique understanding of where I was, what that place used to be, and how we could speculate about its future.

Since I first encountered that ad, Yukie’s project has evolved far beyond its original concept. What began as a blog shared with friends and family grew into an expansive archival initiative: from transforming her SoHo home into a repository of works and materials to creating a series of oral history installations and audio tours. The project even took the form of a mobile museum, partnering with local cultural institutions, before eventually establishing itself as a non-profit and securing a permanent home for its archives at the New-York Historical Society. As Yukie has said, while speaking of her urge to preserve the memory of a place in constant flux: “If you kill the ghost—the figures of the past who made this setting—you kill the desire to be here.”¹ Place is given meaning by its story. Let’s learn from Yukie, her ghostly friends, and the ways we can secure the future by looking at a vital past.

–Agustin Schang

Marian Chudnovsky: Tell me more about the SoHo Memory project. How did you begin the collections process?

Yukie Ohta: SoHo Memory Project is a nonprofit organization with a team of one that celebrates the history of SoHo as a neighborhood. The project began as a blog in 2011 and has grown in leaps and bounds since then. My mission is to preserve SoHo’s past so that present generations understand our neighborhood’s rich history and can make informed decisions as we shape its future.

SoHo Memory Project is a labor of love and my way of giving back to the community that raised me. My parents came to SoHo from Japan in the 1960s to build a life, and what a life they built. I experienced a singular childhood spent inhabiting a magnificent built environment in a community of extraordinary creatives, all the while thinking that that was how everyone lived. Back then, I had no idea how lucky I was. With fifty years of hindsight, it is unfathomable to me that before the SoHo Memory Project there was no dedicated repository that held the evidence of a now-fading artists’ community and the twenty-six blocks of cast-iron buildings they fought to preserve.

I was uniquely positioned to step into the role of SoHo’s memory keeper. As a child of SoHo who still lives in the building where I grew up, I had a lifelong connection to those who were on the front lines of SoHo’s transformation. The neighborhood went from an all-but-abandoned manufacturing area to a thriving artists’ community at a time when the area’s buildings were considered outmoded, and powerful forces felt the city would be better off with a highway or a housing complex instead of the architectural treasures that still stand today.

I began my collection process by contacting the parents of my childhood friends, who also happened to be founders of groups such as the SoHo Artists’ Association, an artists’ advocacy group that fought to legalize loft living for artists, the founder of Artists Against the Expressway, a group that helped defeat Robert Moses’ plan to build a highway through the middle of SoHo, preservationists who advocated for SoHo to be designated a historic district by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and many others. It turned out that many of them sensed that they were living through and participating in a historic moment and had held onto their papers and ephemera related to these movements. By the time I began the collections process in earnest, I had gained their trust both as someone who is dedicated to preserving their stories through my writing and as an archivist with an MSLIS, so they were more than happy to hand over their papers, which would likely have been lost forever otherwise.

MC: What materials did the SoHo Memory Project collect? Were there specific kinds of histories you hoped to highlight?

YO: Thank goodness the artists who pioneered SoHo were crazy enough to make their homes illegally in these abandoned factories and warehouses, forfeiting even basic amenities such as heat and sometimes even hot water in exchange for vast open spaces filled with natural light to do the only thing worth doing––making art. Once ensconced in their new urban habitat, these artists joined forces with each other as well as sympathetic City officials to fight for the right to remain in their homes legally, and won. A modern-day David and Goliath story that fewer and fewer New Yorkers remember as time passes.

This is a story that needs to be told and remembered. To this end, I have been collecting archival materials dating mostly between 1960 and 1980 that document the transformation and preservation of SoHo. Grassroots activism to amend zoning to allow live-work quarters for artists and to designate SoHo a historic district propelled the neighborhood's transformation into a tight-knit community whose image still looms large in the public imagination. This same activism also helped defeat Robert Moses’s plan to build the Lower Manhattan Expressway and thus precipitated New York City’s first instance of widespread adaptive reuse. The repurposing of outmoded buildings, in lieu of rebuilding, had never occurred before on such a large scale and set a precedent for other neighborhoods whose structures outlived their intended uses.

These stories are told through archival documents, ephemera, photographs, videos, oral histories, and objects that I share widely through the SoHo Memory Project website––a digital nexus of source materials related to SoHo history, and which I hope will be a model for other neighborhoods to preserve their own histories in a flexible and accessible format.

In an attempt to include all voices, anyone with any connection to SoHo is invited to share their SoHo story through the website. These firsthand accounts are collected on the “SoHo People” page , which is sorted alphabetically by last name and includes anyone with a SoHo story—from you and me to Keith Haring and Nikola Tesla.

MC: How do you define the confines of “SoHo”? What does that definition/distinction mean to you, especially as the neighborhood has transformed through real estate development and gentrification?

YO: SoHo is also known as the Cast-Iron Historic District, as it was designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in August 1973. For me, SoHo’s borders align with the district’s: Canal Street to the south, Houston Street to the north, Lafayette Street to the east, and West Broadway to the west.

There are approximately 250 cast-iron buildings in New York City, most of them in SoHo and mostly dating from the mid to late-1800’s. An American invention, cast-iron facades were cast in molds as a kit of parts. They were then delivered to buildings and painted to mimic granite or marble. The same molds could be used for multiple buildings, making it a very efficient and cost-effective decorative method. Although cast iron enjoyed short-lived popularity as an architectural material, being replaced by steel-skeleton construction by the 1880s, the buildings of SoHo are considered precursors to the skyscraper and therefore hold much historic significance in the development of New York City.

At one time the term “SoHo” referred to “the other side of the tracks,” a dicey area where artists lurked in the shadows in fear of being evicted, but now SoHo is used as an adjective to describe an aesthetic or a lifestyle that is glamorous and hip with a dash of bohemia mixed in, as in “SoHo-style loft” or “SoHo chic”. The name SoHo has gone from describing an industrial wasteland to the stomping grounds of the well-heeled. As SoHo’s real estate values skyrocketed in the 1970s, the designations changed: much of the South Village is often called SoHo now, as is the northern end of Little Italy, which was later dubbed NoLiTa.

I think everyone has their own SoHo, defined by physical and ideological borders. Mine is laid bare in the hundreds of thousands of words contained on the SoHo Memory Project website. I also understand why some would co-opt the name to add value to their own project, be it when selling a piece of real estate, starting a business, or enhancing one’s artistic pedigree. The goal of the SoHo Memory Project is to provide historical context for how the neighborhood has become one that people invoke for cultural clout.

MC: You previously mentioned that you collect “everything but” art and artists’ archives. What role do you think archives that operate “to the side of art” play in the history of art and alternative arts communities?

YO: I think archives that operate “to the side of art” play an enormous role in the history of art and alternative arts communities. Art is not created in a vacuum. Artists’ communities do not fall from the sky fully formed. The context in which art flourishes, the confluence of events, the community support systems, are as much a part of art history as the art and artist. People often assume that the SoHo Memory Project centers on art and artists, but for the purposes of my project, artists are players in the larger history of New York City. Artist activists and their families fought to amend zoning, historic districting, city codes, and city planning, and they also expanded peoples’ narrow definition of what art and artists are and how they should be valued.

My mission is to collect archival documents from people who were crucial to the development, and consequently to the preservation, of the neighborhood where I was born and raised and still live, before these documents are lost forever. I seek to document the history of a New York neighborhood and to present this history in as many ways as possible.

Institutions often frame archival materials as relics of a time and place far removed from the audience’s contemporary experience—as if the archival record had little to do with the present. To bridge this perceived gap between today’s subject and yesterday’s object, I create access points that align archival objects and documents with everyday experience. In this way, I draw stakeholders of today’s SoHo into familiar spaces, intimately connecting them with the historical archival record, while acknowledging the inherent bias in any collection. I leave interpretation of the record to each stakeholder, no matter the stake, so that they can, as per my mission statement, make informed decisions as we shape SoHo’s future.

MC: Tell me about your experiences growing up going to FOOD. What was the atmosphere like? Can you remember what a typical meal there might have been like?

YO: The restaurant FOOD opened in late 1971 at 127 Prince Street, on the corner of Wooster. Founded by artists Tina Girouard, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Carol Goodden, it was a place that employed struggling SoHo artists and served inexpensive but hearty food to the local community. It was, for a long time, one of the only places to eat in SoHo other than Fanelli’s and a few diners that catered mostly to factory workers, which wasn't only open for breakfast and lunch.

FOOD was way ahead of its time—it served fresh, seasonal foods cooked using local ingredients in an open kitchen. This may be the norm these days, but back then it was virtually unheard of. It was the first place I tried couscous and ceviche and cream cheese frosting.

FOOD’s food was served cafeteria-style. The menu for the day was written on a blackboard and you slid a tray from one end of a counter to the other to get your meal. It was a narrow space with tables and lots of windows including a huge one at the entrance that served as a nerve center of the neighborhood. Filled with small pieces of paper taped to the glass, it was a community bulletin board of sorts through which you could buy or sell items, find childcare, services, affinity spaces, and more.

Two of my friends’ mothers worked at FOOD. For Ingrid, it was her first place of employment after moving to New York from Germany. Working only part-time, she was able to support herself and Anna, her young daughter. Ingrid would bring Anna to work in the morning at 7, where she would sleep curled up on Ingrid’s coat on the floor until it was time to catch the school bus. Joan, Noah’s mother, was in charge of the soups (at least that’s how I remember it). The soups at FOOD were famous throughout SoHo. Made in huge pots, they were hearty and delicious and changed every day. They were served with thick slices of freshly baked whole grain bread and unsalted butter, which were also considered unusual at the time. For dessert you could get enormous slices of carrot cake big enough to feed a family of four. As a small child, I had no understanding or awareness that FOOD was unique, groundbreaking, or “alternative.” I had nothing to compare it to.

MC: How did visiting FOOD growing up, and living among so many artists forming alternative institutional structures impact your thinking as an artist and arts worker?

YO: It impacted not just my thinking as an artist, but as a person. I am a product of 1970s SoHo, a very special place at a very special moment in time. My experiences growing up there have made me who I am today, for better or worse.

In the spirit of Tina Girouard and her peers who created spaces such as 112 Greene Street and Food, I have inherited a just-because-it’s-never-been-done-before-doesn’t-mean-it-can’t-be-done outlook on life. This was a predominant mindset in artists’ SoHo, one that brought us innovations in art, large-scale adaptive reuse, as well as citizen-led rezoning. I also think that the fiscal crisis that was unfolding city-wide in the 1970s provides an important context for what was taking place in SoHo. A New York on the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to a we-have-nothing-to-lose attitude that allowed creative centers such as SoHo to flourish unchecked.

SoHo Memory Project is the manifestation of this mindset. I bring this mindset into my art practice as well. I am currently exploring ways to incorporate the concept of dana (a Sanskrit word that means "generosity" or "giving freely") into an art unmarket. What does this mean? I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s been done on any scale before. But just because it’s never been done doesn’t mean it can’t be done! This mindset nurtured me into adulthood and was a key component of what made SoHo (and me) thrive despite the odds.

MC: When she first moved to New York City in the 1970s, Girouard lived in a loft at 10 Chatham Square in Chinatown. Her time living in the loft encouraged collaboration and fluid work between mediums. From your perspective as an archivist, how do you think the realities of loft living altered artistic production in downtown New York City?

YO: From what I’ve gleaned from the many oral history-style interviews in the SoHo Memory Project archive, there were three major factors of loft living in SoHo that altered artistic production in downtown New York.

The first factor was space. Many artists say that the scale of their work increased once they landed in SoHo. I think it was Joyce Kozloff who said that when she first moved into her loft, she set up her studio space in one corner, which was about the size of her studio in her apartment uptown. It took a while for her to expand psychologically as well as physically, into the larger space, an evolution that continued until she was producing public art pieces and large-scale installation works.

The second factor was that the lofts were live-work. Before loft living in SoHo, most artists lived in one space and worked in another. Live-work lofts allowed artists to meld these two spaces into one continuous place where life was art and art was life and the only thing separating the two was a sheetrock partition, if that. This allowed artists to act on their inspirations immediately.

The third factor was proximity. SoHo became an artists’ community where, for a small while at least, the majority of people who lived in the area were artists. This encouraged exchange of ideas as well as materials and even skills. Loft parties and happenings confined to the twenty-six-blocks of SoHo meant that your work was seen and you saw others’ work. Gallerists moving to SoHo from 57th Street to be closer to their artists added another layer to this. Living among other artists facilitated the exchange of materials. Artists took advantage of the many neighborhood dumpsters for materials as well. Because loft living required tenants to make raw industrial spaces habitable, a barter system developed where one person would help you build a wall in exchange for cabinetry or plumbing.

MC: You (and the Memory Project) have engaged with a few close friends and collaborators of Tina’s, including Carol Gooden, whose names have too often only been listed next to their male collaborators. What role do you see community archives playing in writing new histories?

YO: Community archives uncover new histories. The more participatory an archive is, the more inclusive it can be. Who decides what stories to include in an archive? Usually it is the repository and the archivist. Community archives, however, open space and ask people to fill in what they think is missing from the collection.

I’ve done this by asking community members (anyone who has ever lived or worked in SoHo, past or present, or just passed through as a visitor) to share their SoHo stories through the SoHo Memory Project website; to date, there are 160 such recollections and counting. A story about being a high-school student and visiting an art teacher in his loft. A story from the person who developed the 420 Building on West Broadway, which became the epicenter of the New York art world. Every SoHo story contributes to our collective memory, and the more stories we tell, the closer we come to capturing the spirit of our community.

I partnered with the New York Public Library on a neighborhood oral history project that was open to everyone. The library held a training session, provided an instruction booklet, and lent out recording devices and space. We collected over fifty recorded conversations about SoHo, mostly captured on smartphones, from all sectors of the community. I heard from artists whose quiet careers never made them household names. I heard from real-estate brokers, bartenders, architects, lawyers, and the children of SoHo, now adults, about what it was like to be a SoHo kid.

I’ve also written about people in a variety of fields: the accountant who told artists what they could write off, the architect who set up the first SoHo loft co-ops, the housewife who poached a salmon in her dishwasher because she had no gas… The lists go on and on. The longer they get, the more complete the story. This is how new histories are written.

^NOTES

¹ “Yukie Ohta of SoHo Memory Project to be Honored at Bard Breakfast," The New York Preservation Archive Newsletter (Fall-Winter 2021).

Yukie Ohta is an archivist and founder of SoHo Memory Project, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and preserves the history of artists’ SoHo. She is also a fiber artist who works primarily with thread. She lives with her family in the SoHo building where she grew up.