SPRING AND VARICK, STREETS
OCTOBER 7, 1935. ABBOTT FILE 16

Varick Street, the name given to Seventh Avenue south of Houston Street, is lined with industrial lofts built in the 1920s. Housing the printing industry and other light manufacturing firms, such as Bell Laboratories and Westinghouse Electric Supply, these massive buildings averaged 150,000 square feet of floor space and more than a thousand workers. Today, most of the manufacturers have left the city, but the buildings remain, converted to residences and office space for service industries.

With maximum fenestration and minimal surface decoration, these lofts formed a striking example of the American industrial structures so widely admired in Europe. The uniform vista stands in sharp contrast to the motley assortment of tenements that the buildings had replaced. Abbott chose a particularly uniform group, three of which were built by the same architect within a five-year period. Using a wide-angle lens and a horizontal format, she sacrificed the top of the corner building and did not correct the distorted perspective. Her departure from standard photographic practice lent these utilitarian lofts a futuristic aura.

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