New York City, New York story
A Room Full of Earth
Imagine walking into a tucked-away SoHo loft and finding not a living room, but a landscape. At 141 Wooster Street, you'll find the New York Earth Room. Since 1977, this space has…
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Imagine walking into a tucked-away SoHo loft and finding not a living room, but a landscape. At 141 Wooster Street, you'll find the New York Earth Room. Since 1977, this space has been filled with 250 cubic yards of earth, spread across 3,600 square feet to a depth of 22 inches.
It's the largest version of Walter de Maria's Earth Room series, acting as a permanent interior sculpture. While the city rushes by outside, this installation remains a still, grounded sanctuary. It reopened as a free public installation in 1980 and continues to offer a surreal, tactile contrast to the concrete jungle of Manhattan.
Updated June 2026