"Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building" - What a weird sentence. Like a skyscraper being built successfully is some random event that can be used to indicate bedrock. Are measurements of the bedrock really that hard to come by? p.s. How old is the quote at the end lol? "traipsing through ... Soho to get to work? That land was cheap, but t…
The author is talking about the historical drivers of Midtown's development.
Soho has only been an expensive neighborhood for ~15-20 years, a good century after the rise of Midtown. Back then it was a light industrial district of warehouses and factories with dirty streets, high crime, and high noise. It's important to note that this is pre-containerization, so ships from all over the world docked along the East River and Hudson River, supplying and shipping to/from the factories of Lower Manhattan. The streets were filthy and filled with heavy freight, and its main redeeming value is proximity to the ports.
After containerization and the ports moved away, Soho fell into disrepair as industry moved to be closer to supply lines. In the 60s and 70s artists took over many of the spaces because they were big but the area was undesirable enough to be affordable. It wasn't until the 90s that the area started being gentrified, and it wasn't until the 00s that the area became outrageously expensive.
Ditto Five Points, which doesn't even exist as a discernible neighborhood anymore. Nowadays it's the giant court house complex, but back then it was a poor and dangerous neighborhood.
The NYC from 2000-2016 is not at all like the NYC from the 70s and before.