Galleries of New York

have migrated around the city in three distinct patterns, usually in response to the movement of their patrons and the changing nature of their buyers.

The first pattern, from 1800 to about 1920, was characterized by development spurred on by the Commissioners Plan of 1811, that leveled the topography and grided the streets, and the wealth in commerce that followed the opening of the Erie Canal. As the commercial centers grew, they pushed relentlessly north, the wealthy built their mansions on the leading edge, as far from this commercial expansion as possible. As the commercial buildings closed in on their enclaves of privilege, the mansions were abandoned for land farther north and were rented out until they could be razed for more profitable development. It was in this brief transition from residences to demolition that galleries of this period established a niche in the grand homes. This space between uses occurred first along Broadway downtown and later along Fifth Avenue, from Washington Square to the Upper East side over a period of 125 years.

During the early part of this period, galleries selling "Fine European Paintings" functioned more like auction houses and salons than like public art galleries, catering mostly to rich buyers. This began to change with the advent of lithography and the growth of photography as art. These two developments opened the market to the lower classes, especially during the mid to late 19th century as the sale of lithographs accounted for a greater share of gross sales.

The second pattern was driven by the Great Depression between 1929 and 1945. By the 1920s, the city had spread as far as it could horizontally and began to grow vertically as skyscrapers sprouted among the old mansions of the Vanderbilts and Astors. This marked the transition from "The New Art Centre", where galleries along upper Fifth Avenue were housed in old residences to "Midtown", the same area but now filled with over 100 new skyscrapers.

Greenwich Village was the exception, always a bohemian center of creative activity. During the early 20th century, the tenor began to change from artistic to political, still The Village was home to working artists and would remain that way until later in the century.

The Great Depression left a glut of cheap, empty office space in Midtown in which galleries were able to survive hard economic contraction. This hunkering down gave birth to the 57th Street Corridor as a primary gallery district in NYC. Some galleries began to move into the Upper East Side, where their wealthy patrons finally established an enduring neighborhood. From World War I until the end of World War II, the general public became more and more interested in original art and not just prints, even though they were able only to afford the latter and photography, which was growing into its own form, apart from serving primarily as documentation.

The third pattern exploited abandoned or underdeveloped areas from previous decades. By the 1950s, this polarization hardened into the uptown and downtown art scenes. Downtown, the 10th Street Galleries, co-ops of AE artists in small studios and retail spaces was the short-lived but nascent seed of what was to become the avant-garde center of the industry. By the late 1950s, the old and often dilapidated commercial buildings along Broadway below Houston Street (in areas later named TriBeCa and SoHo) were being squatted in or leased cheaply, first by The Fluxus Group and later by young artists and dealers looking for cheap rents and large spaces. This would become the axiom of the industry, resulting in the phenomenon of SoHo that lasted over 50 years and West Chelsea, still thriving after 27 years.

Rising rents have always driven the art industry into new and cheaper areas. The late 20th-century saw expansion into the tenements of the East Village, then the office buildings along Broadway, into the warehouses of West Chelsea and into the Lower East Side and farther into Brooklyn. Today in the early 21st-century, as new development and the maturation of the real estate market has driven rents to new and perhaps unsustainable heights for galleries, where they go from here is the big unknown.

Many large international galleries have purchased buildings, anchoring these areas as never before. The real pressure is on small to mid-sized galleries, new galleries, who feed the vortex by introducing new and unknown emerging artists, often doing so with the fewest resources. How they adapt will determine the future health of the New York Art World.