The technique of cast-iron architecture was used simply as a way of assembling buildings quickly and cheaply, with iron beams rather than heavy walls carrying the weight of the floors. The result was the removal of load-bearing walls, greater space for windows and remarkably decorative facades. Almost any style or whim could be cast in iron and pinned to a building, and architects created the most fanciful of fronts for SoHo's sweatshops.

 

The SoHo Cast Iron Historic District runs roughly north-south from Houston to Canal and east-west from West Broadway to Broadway. Have a look at 72-76 Greene St , an extravagance whose Corinthian portico stretches its entire five stories, all in painted metal, and at the elaborations of its sister building at nos 28-30 . These are some of the best examples, but from Broome to Canal streets most of the fronts on Greene Street's west side are either real (or mock) cast iron.

At the northeast corner of Broome Street and Broadway is the magnificent Haughwout Building , perhaps the ultimate in cast-iron architecture. Rhythmically repeated motifs of colonnaded arches are framed here behind taller columns in a thin sliver of a mock-Venetian palace. In 1904, Ernest Flagg took the possibilities of cast iron to their conclusion in his " Little Singer " Building , at 561 Broadway (at Prince St), a design whose use of wide window frames points the way to the glass curtain wall of the 1950s.