Bernard Marson, who, as an architect and developer, played a prominent role in the transformation of an industrial district in Lower Manhattan into SoHo, an affordable neighborhood for artists to work and live before expanding into an enclave of chic boutiques, famous bars and expensive apartments, died July 9 at his Los Angeles home. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his son, Alexander.
“Mr. Marson was almost single-handedly responsible for growing New York City’s SoHo into an artist community and a historic district,” said Raquel Ramati, head of the Urban Design Group on Mayor John V. Lindsay’s board, when he recommended him for a fellowship with the American Institute of Architects.
Mr. Marson was already a leading architect in the late 1970s when he came across the South Houston Industrial District, a 50-block area of five- and six-story buildings, many with elegant 19th-century cast iron facades. The neighborhood had just been spared the wrecking ball when Robert Moses’ plans for a Lower Manhattan Expressway were withdrawn.
The neighborhood was in transition, ripe for the kind of project Mr. Marson had undertaken with Israeli architect Moshe Safdie in Jerusalem: the renovation of the Western Wall Square and the Jewish Quarter in the Old City from 1974 to 1976.
In Manhattan, many tenants between Houston and Canal Streets, mostly small businesses—rope and paper workers, rag converters, window curtain and corrugated box manufacturers, and clothing sweat stores—moved to places with lower taxes and labor costs, leaving a dwindling industrial base that city officials were desperately trying to rebuild. preserve.
These businesses were replaced by a burgeoning artist colony in the area south of Houston Street, already informally known as SoHo. Artists were converting undivided, high-ceilinged attics into studios and living spaces—a violation of city regulations in a neighborhood designated for industrial use.
In the late 1970s, when the city was in an economic slump, Mr. Marson led the way in adapting several former factory buildings to create an entirely new neighborhood.
Together with other investors, he bought the 12-story Little Singer Building from architect Ernest Flagg and four other buildings, including a former glue factory.
Some of the space was already being used illegally by artists, but Mr. Marson discovered a loophole in what most city officials believed was a rock-solid ban — an obscure zoning resolution that allowed “studios with attached living” in manufacturing districts. To the dismay of the officials, the city’s Standards and Occupations Council ordered the Buildings Department to send Mr. Allowing Marson to continue.
What followed was a lengthy legal and administrative conflict. On one side were city officials and some landlords who tried to enforce the zoning law to protect existing tenants and prevent gentrification; on the other, with Mr. Marson at the forefront, were developers and artist groups advocating for zoning deviations to reflect the new realities of the real estate market.
“This basically legalized what was already happening,” said Peter Samton, an architect and former colleague of Mr Marson. “The unique aspects of his contributions were the fusion of architecture and development, which were so unusual at the time, some 50 years ago.”
In 1982, state lawmakers passed legislation that Carl Weisbrod, director of the Office of Loft Enforcement in New York City, said would protect 90 percent of loft tenants, including those in the major loft neighborhoods like SoHo, Tribeca and NoHo in lower Manhattan.
Anthony Schirripa, who served as president of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2010, described Mr. Marson at the time as “a pivotal player in SoHo’s transformation from its sweatshop past to its jewel-like present.”
Recent recorded sales in the neighborhood include a two-bedroom apartment at 561 Broadway for $4 million and a one-bedroom apartment at 242 Lafayette Street for $2 million.
Bernard Aaron Marson was born on March 21, 1931 in Manhattan to Alexander Marson, an immigrant from Russia who became a paint salesman, and Etta (Germaine) Marson, who worked in a store in Harlem. He grew up in the West Bronx.
After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he received a degree in civil engineering from New York University’s College of Engineering in 1951. He served as a nuclear weapons officer during the Korean War.
After earning a degree in architecture from Cooper Union in 1961, he worked with Marcel Breuer as that architect’s site representative during the construction of the Whitney Museum of American Art on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a brutalist structure that is now temporarily the Frick Collection houses while the Frick museum nearby is being renovated.
In his private practice, Mr. Marson was notably commissioned to renovate the 1920s Montauk Manor, the Tudor Revival hotel on the East End of Long Island, designed by Schultz and Weaver and built by Carl G. Fisher, who Miami Beach developed when the hotel was converted into apartments in the 1970s.
He married Ellen Sue Engelson in 1978. Besides their son, she outlives him, along with their daughter, Eve; and two grandchildren. The couple moved to California in 2017.
