I thought I had the address wrong. It looked like a private home. But then, sure enough, there was the buzzer. I anxiously pressed the button, waited a few moments, thinking I could still get out of this. But then, with a startling REEE, the door buzzes open and a medium-sized, typical art gallery-fonted sign inside directs me upstairs. Okay, so it appears as if it's "arty." All I can think is, either this is going to be amazing or totally bizarre.
Totally both.
A quiet man sits behind a basic desk. I awkwardly ask him if I have to pay anything, like a donation or a fee or something. He says no, and gestures towards the room. A 3,600 square-foot loft. Full of dirt. Modern civilization calls it the New York Earth Room.
Perfectly manicured, perfectly level, perfectly dirty dirt. In 1977, the artist Walter De Maria hauled 280,000 pounds of it into a primo loft space in SoHo Manhattan and called it an interior earth sculpture. Natural light was the only light source when I viewed, and the room was obviously temperature- and humidity-controlled to keep the dirt happy. As it should be. Economically speaking, a 3,400 square-foot loft nearby recently sold for $5.75 million. Which means 1 square foot of dirt = >$1,600.
(I am not supposed to take photographs. I know. I did read the sign. Sorry. I had to. If it helps, I didn't use a flash.)
Now, many of the reviews I read were of the head-scratching variety; most people just didn't "get it." Honestly, what's not to get? Manhattan, like the rest of everything everywhere, is Christopher Columbus 2.0; we are the culture of urban conquerers. If humans are given space, their first instinct is to fill it with something. So what if Walter De Maria decided to fill his space with dirt in 1977? Or hire a guy whose sole job is to tend to the dirt and let people in the door? Was Walter's big political statement supposed to be against the excessiveness of the developed world around him? Or was his choice of filling a multimillion-dollar space with dirt the highest level of excessive behavior?
Either way, fantastic space. So close to Starbucks!
