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Loft living, that is the habitation of a building originally intended for commercial use turned into residential...
started life not by design, but by accident. It was driven by the necessity of artists and the social economic forces that were shaping New York’s property market towards the mid-twentieth century. The early residents of Lofts were not stockbrokers and millionaires, but starving artists, designers and performance artistes who sought to forge a new way of living out of the debris left by the de-industrialisation of Manhattan. Those same forces changed London some years later, but to understand why, and how, we must first go back to the city that gave birth to the Loft: New York.
New York in the 1940’s, was recovering from the great depression, and the loss of industries, like clothing, furniture had created a swathe of large, empty warehouses in SoHo, the area that was South of Houston street. These buildings had been created for the express purpose of manufacturing – large cast iron frames- which were designed to enable multiple stories to be built whilst retaining huge open plan floor spaces throughout the inside - ideal for light manufacturing. The buildings through their design also made it possible for the walls to have floor to ceiling windows all the way around the buildings, between the columns. By the 1950’s, most of the buildings had been abandoned by the manufacturers, who wanted somewhere more modern, or whose industries had died. Landlords were left with huge empty buildings that nobody wanted.
Except for, that is, artists. Modernism had already been in the ascendant in America for some time, and painters were looking for new styles of art that could express the world that they now saw around them. What they all agreed on, was that they needed space. The expressionists, who gravitated around Paris at the turn of the century, were producing large canvases, and they all had started to live in Montmartre, where there were large attic like apartments, which gave them the light and space that they were looking for. The New York artists, inspired by their French counterparts, saw in Soho the potential for their own Montmartre. The empty buildings of SoHo were cheap, incredibly cheap, and well positioned, far away from the money madness of uptown. Artists started to move into them as early as the 1940’s. Robert Rauschenberg, the Abstract Expressionist painter, moved into a loft on Fulton St downtown, in 1953. The landlord demanded $15 a month; Rauscenberg got it for $10. This loft was not a practical home. There was no heating, no running water, and no clearly defined areas. Rauschenberg had a hose and a bucket in a yard out back, and sometimes took showers at friend’s houses under the pretence of just using the bathroom.
These early factory-cum-apartments were the real lofts. Almost all of them were in various states of disrepair. Some were rented free on the condition that the occupant renovated them. Some still had printing machines left by the last businesses, and were so large to move that they just stayed and became part of the furniture. This style of living however suited the artists in an age that was dawning on the western world, in particular America. Modernism was changing the way we lived our lives and this gave people the freedom to unburden themselves from the conventional, restricting style of living that their ancestors had created. The modernism of the buildings – straight lines, huge amounts of space – offered a new way of life, which artists took up enthusiastically. Their art also demanded more space as new art forms like Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art were created on large canvases, which in turn needed large spaces not only to create them, but to exhibit them as well. So in turn, art galleries started to move into the SoHo area, to be closer to the new wave of artists that were influencing America.
Loft living was though, still illegal. These buildings were situated in commercial zones and the town planners were not open to the idea of changing the pattern of the city; they feared losing vital employment land if the buildings became residential. So the early adopters of this new way of living used all sorts of subterfuge to fool planners that would come to visit, from hiding domestic areas behind screens, to simply not being around when they called!
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Quite soon however, things came to a head. The New York city council had started to feel that the area was run down and started to discuss plans to demolish the whole area, perhaps placing a freeway in its place. There were many in the city, not only artists, but environmentalists and conservationists, who felt that these industrial buildings, now being used as artists lofts, were an important example of American architecture and deserved to be protected, and that the artists living in them were providing and creating a cultural quarter for all New Yorkers, if not all Americans. Things started to go the artist’s way in 1963 when Professor Chester Rapkin submitted what became known as the Rapkin report, which reported the economic activity that was still occurring in the area, and the regeneration that the artists had brought to SoHo. This idea of regeneration greatly influenced many world capital’s views towards Lofts and artists, London among them.
After Rapkin’s report, the city authorities were more benevolent to artists, and started to allow them to inhabit the lofts legally. In 1964, a city law was passed that allowed artists to live in these abandoned factories, provided that they registered with the authorities. Within a year of the law being passed, there were 3,000 artists registered. In case of fire, the artists had to place a plaque on the door so that the firemen would know where they were. These are now collector’s items. From then on, loft living in America increased in popularity, and rents increased too, until no starving artist could afford to live there any longer, and the area, now regenerated, became a trendy district for the burgeoning middle class.
In London, similar forces were to shape the birth of lofts. Although there had been lofts in London for some time, they were not on the scale of New York. The corresponding areas of London, Shoreditch and Clerkenwell, were still full of small manufacturers and companies using the buildings. These left in the 1980’s due to law changes and increased rents. The economic crash of the late 80’s, just like the crash of the late 30’s of America, was to provide the perfect conditions for the process to be repeated in London. Again, huge swathes of disused buildings were gathering dust in a run down part of London. Again, artists looking for cheap, well positioned buildings which they could live and work in, moved in. And again, these artists wanted to live and work in these buildings, as they could not afford two residences. This time, the artists were not as frustrated as they had been in New York and the landlords turned a blind eye to their living arrangements. The lure of the Loft, the undefined space, is as much if not more attractive to the English. The vast, overwhelming majority of the country inhabits, and always have been, forced to live in conventional terraced houses which imitate our previous perceptions of village life. For many, this is heaven. But for some, the juxtaposition of the modern person inhabiting a building of the past, with exposed brick, beams, limitless space and light, the loft represents a new mode of living, one that can only be associated with this age.
Today, the pioneering artists that created, fueled and advertised the new lifestyles are in the minority. Due to their popularity, the “ new lofts “, are smaller, the exposed brickwork is purposely exposed and the rough, uninhabitable feel has been replaced by strip wood floors, fitted kitchens and luxury bathrooms. This has enabled loft living to be enjoyed by the many, rather than the few and developers, have adapted the style into their designs and now offer buyers apartments that incorporate the best features of lofts, without the impracticalities of having a printing press in your front room!
Loft style apartments are now a permanent feature of all urban centres across England, especially London, and offer an alternative to the terraces of middle England, an alternative which is quintessentially urban, and modern. |
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