In 1977, the year Elvis died, I went for a walk on the fourth floor in Soho—a neighborhood of cobbled streets and fire escapes. I had never seen a cast-iron building before and I was fascinated. There was one particular old factory with an ornate facade that I could never touch. It was hard to believe that these intricate details were cast into something as simple as iron. My apartment had a bathtub in the kitchen, with rusty brown water coming out for the first 30 seconds, and when you turned on the light at night, there were tons of cockroaches everywhere. But, at $250 a month, I couldn’t complain. in spring That year there was a feeling of euphoria on the streets of Soho. Each man appeared to be under 30 years old, wore a tool belt and carried slabs of plasterboard. New shops, bars and Art Galleries opened every month and the streets throbbed with the sense of impending change. Three years later, Soho became the capital of the US art world.
Forty-seven years later, two marriages and six different homes later, I live back on the block where I started: Thompson Street between Spring and Broome. Naturally, the area has changed a bit, but I can’t stand hearing people complain about change and I especially hate the phrase: ‘It’s not the same.’ Nothing is, and shouldn’t be. Ironically, I now live in a building that, 15 years ago, I swore would only be built over my dead body. When I moved to Thompson Street in 1977, there was a beautiful Art Deco garage on my corner. In 2009, it was bought by a group of developers, who planned to tear it down and replace it with something ultra-modern. Along with 20 or so people from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, I pushed the development forward. We stood about 50 feet from the garage carrying poorly written signs protesting the destruction of this wonderful building. Now, I have become a tenant in the same building whose construction I opposed.
Brook Holm
While renovating my new apartment, I went to endless trouble to make it look nothing like my New York and London Restaurants. However, the first words he says upon entering the apartment are, ‘This looks just like Bilthazar.’ Although I rent rather than own an apartment, that hasn’t stopped me from spending an absurd amount of money to make it my own. And although I think that taste is subjective, I also believe the opposite. That there is such a thing as good taste. The trouble is, those who use the term ‘good taste’ are rare. Because the tenants of my building are prohibited from making more than superficial changes to their apartments, all my work was done in secret. Especially plastering my walls to soften the sharp corners of the space. Renovating my apartment was like a spy movie. Carpenters and tailors walk past the building’s unsuspecting doormen wearing suits. Once inside my apartment, they would change into overalls and work in complete secrecy. I flew over two plasterers I used in London and they would smuggle plasters hidden in suitcases. Eventually, management cottoned on to what I was going to do, but was so impressed with the look of the apartment that they let the changes stay.
