This is New York: Tribeca

This is what Soho once was: the industrial neighborhood of glorious industrial architecture that still remains just about that. No other city in the world has as much fine cast-iron architecture as New York does, and while Soho is more famous for it, some of the very best example—along with much fine masonry construction—can be found in the blocks below Canal Street and west of Church Street.

The neighborhood is right now in the process of either slipping or improving, depending on who you are and what you want from it; there is no question that the Soho-ization has been proceeding in earnest for some time now. The new name is indicative of that TRIangleBElowCAanal Street, cute enough to make the name SoHo sound like Wall Street by comparison.

Now the area is full of living lofts, many of them occupied by the artists driven out of SoHo by the price of their own success at making that a viable neighborhood. Soon, if the process keeps up, they will be forced away from Tribeca, too, for the buildings are as desirable here, the atmosphere quieter and more attractive, and the prices firmly on the rise.

Hanging plants now appear in the windows of buildings where machinery and warehouse goods used to sit—the ultimate test of the presence of the middle class. (Indeed, hanging plants are considered such a giveaway that residents say that the City Planning Commission checks on the number of lofts being used as residences by sending people up and down the streets of Tribeca, counting plants in the windows.)

The ebb and flow of the city is ceaseless; this is the shore upon which the wave is now breaking.