3 THE GALLERIST PAULA COOPER'S SOHO 70S

"It was different then. The pace was much slower and just more humane and civilized."

- AS TOLD TO MADELINE LEUNG COLEMAN

WHEN PAULA COOPER opened a gallery on the third floor of a Prince Street walk-up in 1968, Soho was in transition.

“It was pretty empty down there,” she says. “Everything closed at four o'clock, all the workers went home, and all the factories closed.” The people who stayed behind were artists who had taken possession of Soho’s recently abandoned industrial lofts and turned the neighborhood into a place where art could happen. Cooper was deeply involved with the artists she represented—including Chris Wilmarth, Lynda Benglis, Mark di Suvero, Joel Shapiro, and Elizabeth Murray, who were also her friends, co-conspirators, and sometimes even her typists—and she saw the possibilities in setting up shop where they wanted to be. But would anybody else be willing to come all the way to Soho?