Editing SoHo, Manhattan (section)

===Artists move in===
After the abandonment of the highway scheme, the city was left with a large number of historic buildings that were unattractive for the kinds of [[manufacturing]] and [[commerce]] that survived in the city in the 1970s. The upper floors of many of these buildings had been built as commercial [[Manhattan loft]]s, which provided large, unobstructed spaces for manufacturing and other industrial uses. These spaces attracted artists who valued them for their large areas, large windows admitting [[Daylighting (architecture)|natural light]] and low rents. Most of these spaces were also used illegally as living space, despite being neither [[zoning|zoned]] nor equipped for residential use. This widespread zoning violation was ignored for a long period of time, as the artist-occupants were using space for which there was little demand due to the city's poor economy at the time, and would have lain dormant or been abandoned otherwise.<ref name=aia /><ref name=enc-nyc /><ref name=nycland />
[[File:105 Mercer Street.jpg|thumb|left|187px|SoHo also contains former industrial buildings in other architectural styles, and is also dotted with smaller structures like this [[Federal architecture|Federal style]] house built in 1819–20.]]
Nevertheless, as the artist population grew, the city made some attempts to stem the movement, concerned about the occupation of space that did not meet residential building codes, and the possibility that the occupied space might be needed for the return of manufacturing to New York City. Pressured on many sides, including by organizations such as the Artist Tenant Association and later the Soho Artist Association,<ref>[https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/491ZVJcvyoAOFD "Zoning Resolutions: The Soho Artists and the Making of Urban Policy, 1961-1971 (2017)"]{{Dead link|date=November 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> the city abandoned attempts to keep the district as strictly industrial space, and in 1971, the Zoning Resolution was amended to permit Joint Live-Work Quarters for artists, and the M1-5a and M-5b districting was established to permit visual artists, certified as such by the Department of Cultural Affairs, to live where they worked.{{citation needed|date=December 2013}} In 1987, non-artists residing in SoHo and NoHo were permitted to [[Grandfather clause|grandfather]] themselves, but that was the only extension to non-artists and was a one-time agreement.{{citation needed|date=December 2013}}

The area received landmark designation as the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District in 1973.<ref name=nycland />