Next stop SoHo, fashion lovers’ paradise and much more

SoHo, a shorthand for South of Houston Street, boasts a colourful history that has seen it live through periods of splendour and less salubrious incarnations. Its first golden era was around the middle of the 19th century when large businesses and luxury hotels began to open up along Broadway. Theatres then started cropping up and the area between Canal and Houston Street became a lively shopping and entertainment destination that became the go-to place in New York.

In the 1970s, SoHo was earmarked as the site for two elevated branches of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, but the project was abandoned, leaving the area full of unappealing old commercial buildings and factories. The top floor of many of these had been built as vast lofts for manufacturing or industrial purposes, making them of little interest to the well-heeled classes.

To the artists who inhabited the neighbourhood, however, they represented a perfect solution, and so it was that SoHo became one of the main artistic hubs of New York, attracting art lovers from all over the city. In the Seventies, it was considered a somewhat bohemian arty neighbourhood but the distinctive buildings and vibrant atmosphere began to attract a wider public in the following decade, and big brands soon followed.

Today it is a popular tourist destination for visitors in search of high fashion and elegant architecture, and real estate prices are some of the highest in the country.