SoNoLita

SoNoLita (South of NoLIta) is the proposed name for a new neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, which currently lacks any official status. The area being proposed to comprise Sonolita is bounded on the east by Baxter Street, on the west by Lafayette Street, on the south by Canal Street and on the north is capped by the intersection of Cleveland Place, Lafayette Street and Kenmare Street. It would lie east of SoHo, west of Little Italy, south of NoLita and north of Chinatown.
Local features and history
The Police Building is located at 240 Centre Street, between Broome and Grand. The building opened in 1909 as the New York Police headquarters. It was designed by the firm of Hoppin & Koen in an Edwardian Baroque style influenced by the Beaux Arts movement, which was popular at the time. The New York Police Department. moved out in 1973 and the building was converted to luxury condominiums in 1987. There are 55 apartments on six floors. The building is known as the residence of several high-profile celebrities. An apartment in the Police building was the setting for short-lived sitcom Off Centre, that aired on The WB network. The show is based on director years sharing an apartment in the building with his friend, banker Euan Rellie.
The proposed neighborhood includes the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), situated on Centre Street between Hester Street and Grand. The museum was founded in 1980 to promote a better understanding of Chinese American history.
At the south-western intersection of Centre and Grand Streets stands one of the oldest working examples of New York City lamppost, the Bishop Crook Type 1BC. It is recognized for several archaic elements that later Crooks dispensed with and is one of just three Type 1BC's still in active use in Manhattan. According to the historian Henry Hope Reed, the Bishop's Crook lamppost was designed in 1896 by Richard Rogers Bowker, an Edison Company executive, and several were erected on Broadway and other major avenues, often exactly at the corner, pointing diagonally into the intersection.
The area was once home to the first Singer sewing machine factory in New York. It was a room 25 x 50 feet on Centre Street. Business soon outgrew the facilities at Centre Street and in 1858, new factories were operated at Mott, Spring, Delancey and Broome streets, until in 1872, all these were combined on the location of the present factory at Elizabethport, N. J.
The area is home to many restaurants, bars and nightclubs including La Esquina, Brinkley's, Kenmare and Southside.

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