What did SoHo smell like back in the day?

An artist’s son who grew up in SoHo in the 1970s remembered it this way:

“SoHo smelled like a beautiful cigar.”

What a wonderful image! The five story cast iron building (101 Spring St, at Mercer) that Donald Judd bought in 1968 for less than $70,000 is being restored by a foundation that will honor the building’s 1870s origins and Judd’s sculpture and artistic legacy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/garden/23judd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The 1970s SoHo that Flavin Judd grew up in included the cigar factories that sweetened the environment, loading docks (he played with his sister under the ramps by which trucks unloaded) and the original (small) Dean & Deluca.

As a house museum, 101 Spring Street will be a representation of a carefully curated, minimalist residence that with other artists’ residences in SoHo pioneered the idea of loft living: now a style and a housing standard. Judd’s vision of life at home within its context of art and design, collecting and display, and its religiously strict dictations of space and arrangement, is a template for much recent fashion in interiors, from the work of architects like John Pawson to the visual philosophies of magazines like Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple. The vocabulary of furnishings — the stainless steel sinks, the antique saltware, the modernist furniture, the white bistro china — reads like a primer on contemporary taste.

There is something subversive about the idea of a museum to loft living. Particularly because, as the Times notes, 101 Spring is just a block from 40 Mercer — one of the new uber-loft condo developments that are the direct linear descendants of the original artist lofts.

Click the link to the article, the go to the Multimedia Slide Show for photos of the building, some furnishings and design elements per Judd, and the original elevator.