Soho Fire Escapes (photo)

Apartment Buildings Replete with Fire escapes and 6 Storey Walk ups. The name SoHo refers to the area being South of Houston (Street), and was also a reference to the London district of Soho. It was coined by Chester Rapkin, an urban planner and author of the South Houston Industrial Area study, also known as the Rapkin Report. This began a naming convention that became a model for the names of emerging and re-purposed neighborhoods in New York such as Tribeca for Triangle Below Canal Street, DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), NoHo (North of Houston Street), Nolita (North of Little Italy) and Nomad (North of Madison Square), among others.