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A vibrant and exuberant pictorial map of SoHo at the height of its 1980s creative renaissance, designed by David Anson Russo and published in celebration of the tenth anniversary of WNCN 104.3 FM, New York’s classical music station. The map captures the energy and character of the neighborhood during a pivotal cultural moment, just before the forces of gentrification would transform it.
Buildings are drawn in a whimsical axonometric perspective and overlaid with colorful, hand-lettered labels identifying hundreds of active sites—galleries, restaurants, shops, studios, and clubs—between Houston and Canal Streets. Major east-west thoroughfares like Prince, Spring, Broome, and Grand are prominently rendered, while the map’s dense visual texture reflects the high concentration of cultural activity in SoHo at the time. A yellow border marked with a lettered and numbered grid keys to an extensive directory of listings on the map’s side panels, organized by category and location.
Inset in the lower left corner is a “History of Soho,” adapted from the 1973 report of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designating the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. It traces the area’s evolution from colonial farmland to a nineteenth-century mercantile district, and then to its rediscovery by artists and creative industries in the 1960s and ’70s. Additional speech-bubble callouts throughout the image highlight key historical events and figures.
Russo, then in his mid-twenties and a recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts, brings a bold, cartoonish style to the composition that would later define his best-selling maze and puzzle books. His use of saturated color, comic lettering, and playful labeling captures the visual language of SoHo street art and alternative culture, echoing the aesthetic energy of contemporaries like Keith Haring.
Commercially distributed and likely folded or rolled for display, the poster now serves as a rare and richly detailed record of SoHo before its commercial transformation. It also documents the promotional reach of independent FM radio stations in the mid-1980s and their role in engaging with the cultural fabric of the city.
