New York's Erstwhile "Type Ward"
April 18, 2014 8:56 AM Subscribe
New York once had a concentration of type foundries near City Hall. "What did they find so vital about this one neighborhood?"
I have long loved that shot of the three major New York newspapers all in buildings on the same park.
posted by dhartung at 12:02 PM on April 18, 2014
posted by dhartung at 12:02 PM on April 18, 2014
As much as anything, economies of agglomeration. For most types of businesses, being located somewhere near your competitors is actually valuable; as an example, think about Las Vegas. Locating on the Strip in Vegas puts you as close as possible to your casino competitors, yet that's what people pay billions to do. There are a number of advantages; the biggest one (especially in this case) is that having a bunch of casinos located in the same area is a much bigger draw, and people travel a long ways. Even though in principle it would be better to be the only casino near a major city, in practice, instead of getting 100% of a million visitors a year, it's better to get 2% of the two hundred million visitors Las Vegas gets (All numbers made up.) Furthermore, other supporting services start locating near the agglomeration to be near to their customers; Las Vegas probably has (or at least had) a really competitive neon sign industry, lots of experts on surveillance cameras, poker chip manufacturing, etc. From the perspective of the newspapers, one reason to locate where they did was to be near to the type foundries.
There's nothing unique about that area to be specifically great for type foundries; yes, there was a lot of newspaper production there, but the historical printing district was over in west Soho in the Hudson Square area, and surely book printers need type. Advertising is of course historically based on Madison Avenue, and those guys need type, too. There were a few potential locations that made sense; the one that happened was just one of them. But once one type foundry was established in the area, it was actually more likely for others to spring up in the same area.
You can see this concept in a lot of places once you start looking for it; elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, the area along Bowery near Houston is a restaurant supply agglomeration, for instance. A classic one is the Diamond District; it not only has a huge portion of the world's diamond trade passing through, it also has ancillary support services -- the American Gemological Institute is located there, for instance, as is a synagogue (the NYC diamond trade has a lot of Orthodox Jews in it), and I'm guessing that the NYPD pays some attention to the area as well.
This agglomeration pattern is common throughout the world; particularly in very large cities (where the kind of specialization needed to make these agglomerations obvious exist). I found it to be most common in the Levant; there is (probably was, sadly) a street in Aleppo where all the stores sold scales. I was always getting lost in Amman until I realized that the downtown was basically a big department store; once you realized that the men's shirts were near the booksellers, and the pirated DVDs near the fruit and veg market, you could find your way easily.
But my favourite agglometation in the world is the chess agglomeration in NYC. New York has two stores that sell nothing but chess supplies (sets, books, timers, magazines, who knows what else). Not clubs, dedicated stores. They are both near NYU, which makes some sense. They are both near Washington Square Park, which has the open-air Searching for Bobby Fischer chess games; that makes more sense. They are both literally across the street from each other. How cool is that?
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:53 PM on April 18, 2014 [6 favorites]
There's nothing unique about that area to be specifically great for type foundries; yes, there was a lot of newspaper production there, but the historical printing district was over in west Soho in the Hudson Square area, and surely book printers need type. Advertising is of course historically based on Madison Avenue, and those guys need type, too. There were a few potential locations that made sense; the one that happened was just one of them. But once one type foundry was established in the area, it was actually more likely for others to spring up in the same area.
You can see this concept in a lot of places once you start looking for it; elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, the area along Bowery near Houston is a restaurant supply agglomeration, for instance. A classic one is the Diamond District; it not only has a huge portion of the world's diamond trade passing through, it also has ancillary support services -- the American Gemological Institute is located there, for instance, as is a synagogue (the NYC diamond trade has a lot of Orthodox Jews in it), and I'm guessing that the NYPD pays some attention to the area as well.
This agglomeration pattern is common throughout the world; particularly in very large cities (where the kind of specialization needed to make these agglomerations obvious exist). I found it to be most common in the Levant; there is (probably was, sadly) a street in Aleppo where all the stores sold scales. I was always getting lost in Amman until I realized that the downtown was basically a big department store; once you realized that the men's shirts were near the booksellers, and the pirated DVDs near the fruit and veg market, you could find your way easily.
But my favourite agglometation in the world is the chess agglomeration in NYC. New York has two stores that sell nothing but chess supplies (sets, books, timers, magazines, who knows what else). Not clubs, dedicated stores. They are both near NYU, which makes some sense. They are both near Washington Square Park, which has the open-air Searching for Bobby Fischer chess games; that makes more sense. They are both literally across the street from each other. How cool is that?
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:53 PM on April 18, 2014 [6 favorites]
I was always getting lost in Amman until I realized that the downtown was basically a big department store; once you realized that the men's shirts were near the booksellers, and the pirated DVDs near the fruit and veg market, you could find your way easily.
There's also a fantastic mansaf place by the men's shirts. Completely serious.
posted by atbash at 2:48 PM on April 21, 2014
There's also a fantastic mansaf place by the men's shirts. Completely serious.
posted by atbash at 2:48 PM on April 21, 2014
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