The NoHo Historic District, whose name derives from “NOrth of HOuston Street,” extends from north of Houston St. to East 9th St., and east from Broadway and Mercer St. to Lafayette St. and the west side of Cooper Square. In the 1970s and 1980s artists started to occupy the area’s loft buildings, calling it NoHo to distinguish it from SoHo; previously NoHo was known as a “warehouse district.”

The area of NoHo Historic District was once farmland belonging to many of New York’s prominent early families, including the Bayards, Herrings, Bleeckers, Peros, and Randalls. It occupied a low ridge rising south to north that was known as Sandy Hill. At the time of the Revolutionary Wars, several roads traversed the area, including the Bowery, Astor Place (originally Art Street), Broadway (originally Middle Road), and a farm lane near present day Great Jones St. Most of the remaining streets in the area, such as Bond St., Great Jones St., 4th St., Mercer St., and Crosby St., had been opened by the early-nineteenth-century.

The NoHo Historic District, which is comprised of approximately 125 buildings, represents the period of New York City’s commercial history from the early 1850s to the 1910s, when this section prospered as one of its major retail and wholesale dry goods centers. Acclaimed architects were commissioned to design ornate store and loft buildings in popular architectural styles, providing a rich fabric against which shoppers promenaded, looked at display windows and bought goods, and merchants sold products. The district also contains early-nineteenth-century houses, nineteenth-century institutional buildings, turn-of-the-century office buildings, as well as modest twentieth-century commercial structures, all of which testify to each successive phase in the development of the historic district. Today, the effect is of powerful and unifying streetscapes of marble, cast-iron, limestone, brick, and terra-cotta façades. The NoHo Historic District remains remarkably intact, providing an invaluable view of the development of commercial architecture in New York City.

This excerpt from: NOHO Historic District ­ Designation Book, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, June 29, 1999.