The Neighborhood
Welcome to the Noho Historic District, a landmarked neighborhood with a rich and
layered past. Home to New York's first botanical gardens, the area began as a flourishing
natural retreat. In the 19th-century, the Astor family transformed it into a fashionable
enclave for Beaux Arts mansions and home to the cultural elite, the likes of Charles
Dickens and the Vanderbilts. In the 1960s, artists took claim of Noho's beautiful,
cobbled streets. Robert Mapplethorpe, Chuck Close, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol,
and their contemporaries revitalized the area with a new creative energy, still
tangible today.