c.1980: 54 Crosby Street

  • BACK TO: ARTURO DI MODICA HOME When Arturo Di Modica first encountered 54 Crosby Street in the late 1970s, it...

    Arturo Di Modica outside the original Crosby Street shack

    ©Arturo Di Modica

    BACK TO: ARTURO DI MODICA HOME
     

    When Arturo Di Modica first encountered 54 Crosby Street in the late 1970s, it scarcely qualified as a property at all. It was little more than a decaying structure pressed against its neighbour, overlooked and unwanted. Where others saw dereliction, Di Modica recognised possibility.

    Crosby Street lay at the heart of what was then still known as the Cast Iron District — a former light-industrial zone that had narrowly escaped obliteration decades earlier, when Robert Moses proposed slicing a superhighway through Lower Manhattan. That plan was famously halted by Jane Jacobs, and in the aftermath artists began quietly occupying the abandoned factories and warehouses. By the time Di Modica arrived, galleries were beginning to cluster in the area soon to be called SoHo, though much of it remained rough, neglected, and financially inaccessible to anyone without means.

  • "I built 54 Crosby St studio 2-floors up, with salvaged materials, and then wanted a basement but couldn’t get permission."

     
    - Arturo Di Modica
    Di Modica had vision, but little money. The landowner knew it. “What are you going to pay me with? Stones?” he reportedly asked. After prolonged negotiation, the owner relented. “Come down to the office with $5,000.” Di Modica scraped the sum together and arrived with a lawyer, only discovering at the last moment that the amount represented a down payment, not the full price. Against legal advice, he signed anyway. With no funds remaining, Di Modica reverted to instinct. As he had done years earlier in Florence, he scavenged. He found seven-metre timber beams, dragged them through the streets at night, fenced the site, demolished the original shack, and exposed the old foundations beneath. He bought 8,000 bricks for $400 from a priest and began construction — without permits, without architects, and entirely to his own design.
  • Two floors rose. Then work paused. Space, however, remained a problem. Di Modica’s plans demanded more room, but official requests...

    Di Modica building out his basement in 54 Crosby Street

    ©Arturo Di Modica

    Two floors rose. Then work paused. Space, however, remained a problem. Di Modica’s plans demanded more room, but official requests to excavate were denied. He responded not with protest, but persistence. Armed with a shovel, he dug by day, removed rubble by night, and smuggled in materials under cover of darkness. Over time, two underground levels took shape.
     
    Eventually the city noticed. An inspector arrived — and was so impressed by the workmanship that the violations were forgiven. The subterranean expansion was approved. Few artists have built their environment with such resolve. 54 Crosby Street became Di Modica’s axis: home, studio, gathering place. He installed a bar, hosted legendary parties, and worked at monumental scale. It was here, within walls he had quite literally carved out of the city, that his most important works would be conceived.

  • Charging Bull

    1989

  • Rockerfeller Center

    1977

  • Il Cavallo

    1988