The Gansevoort Market Historic District was landmarked in 2003 thanks to efforts by Village Preservation. In 2002 Village Preservation wrote: "Gansevoort Market is one of Manhattan's defining neighborhoods - gritty, hard-working, low-rise, with its own special character, and a rich collection of buildings and history that cannot be replaced." Since 2002 much of the grittiness has been replaced with luxury. The High Line has transformed from abandoned to desirable. The world-renowned Whitney Museum of American Art has replaced blue-collar meatpackers. But thanks to landmarking, the rich collection of buildings still define the area and remain (mostly) low-rise. The architecture of the district tells the story of an important era in New York City’s history when it became the financial center of the country and when its markets were expanding to serve the metropolitan region and beyond.

440 West 14th Street ca. 2003 Near the southern end of the High Line, the Meatpacking District bustles with designer clothing stores, outdoor cafes, and trendy hotels. Tourists in particular flock to this area, and it can often be a source of amusement to watch club-goers navigate the bumpy Belgian block (aka cobblestone) streets in their fashionable stilettos. Many New Yorkers, however, remember a very different Meatpacking District of not too long ago. Historically known as Gansevoort Market, that story has been well documented already, so instead we thought we would focus on the story of a particular building: 440 West 14th Street at the southwest corner of Washington Street. Built on land owned by the Astors from 1819 to 1946, this Queen Anne style building has stood on this corner since 1887. Architect James W. Cole designed no. 440 as French Flats with a ground floor store. The Gansevoort Market Historic District Designation Report describes it as “an indication that quality residential buildings were still being constructed on West 14th Street until the turn of the century, despite the inroads of commerce all around the district.” The report is a valuable resource for discovering just who rented out the ground floor store over the course of its history. The earliest was John H. Rohde, a saloon and liquor dealer, who occupied the space from 1887 to 1906. Future tenants also included those selling produce; butter, cheese, and eggs; poultry; provisions; and, beginning in 1946, meat. By 1935, the upper apartments were converted to office space. At the time the report was written in 2003, Gachot & Gachot, Inc (which had changed names several times over the years), had been supplying meat in this space since 1980. By 2003, most of the windows of the upper floors had been bricked up, the canopy had rusted, and brick infill had closed off much of the storefront. Fast forward a mere ten years later: the windows of the Diane von Furstenberg Studio have been re-opened with single-pane glass (perhaps not the best contextual choice), a perforated glass canopy running the length of three buildings has been installed, the storefront’s brick infill has been replaced with large plate glass, and the brick and pressed metal cornice has been cleaned.

West 13th Street looking west to Pier 54, Master Purveyor, and the High Line, ca. 1990. For 44 years Master Purveyors was on 13th Street near Washington Street. The company relocated to Hunts Point Terminal Market, a 60-acre site in the Bronx, in spring 2001 when the landlord refused to renew the lease. Sam Solasz, the owner, describes his customer base as ''the finest hotels and restaurants in New York.'' Along with his two sons with whom he co-owns the business, Sam Solasz sells cuts to top-chop houses in the city like Peter Luger Steak House, Wolfgang's Steakhouse, '21' Club and the Hilton Hotel chain. Before starting Master Purveyors, Sam worked for Hygrade Food Corporation. It was the third largest meat business in the U.S. at the time, selling frankfurters to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs. Sam came up with the original blend of Nathan's while at Hygrade. "They loved it," he said. One week after his first blend, Nathan's started buying 2,000–3,000lbs of Sam's frankfurters weekly!

“A new warehouse is being built over and including the elevated roadbed in the block from Horatio to Gansevoort Streets. April 9, 1934.” The nine-story brick and limestone warehouse was designed by architects John B. Snook Sons for the New York State Realty & Terminal Company (owners of the elevated railroad right of way), built between 1931-35 and leased to the Manhattan Refrigerating Company, who bought the building outright in 1941. Construction on lower segment West Side Line elevated tracks was completed in 1934, eliminating all grade crossings of the former freight line along West Street and “Death Avenue,” as Tenth Avenue was nicknamed.

Wedged between the West Street portion of the West Side Highway and bustling 9th Avenue, the history of this site tells us about the many lives of this particular swath of Downtown Manhattan. This area was first largely industrial, then a hub of slaughterhouses and packing plants, and now an area densely populated with galleries as well as the latest home to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Built as the New York headquarters for the Bell Telephone Laboratories, this industrial complex was one of the largest in the country when completed. As a telecommunication facility between 1898 and 1966, a number of major inventions took place here including the first transistor, first experimental talking movies, first vacuum tube, and early television. In 1966 Bell abandoned the massive complex. In 1968, under the direction of developer Dixon Bain and with funding from the J.M. Kaplan Fund and the National Council for the Arts (later the NEA), the buildings were converted into low-income live-work spaces for artists and their families. Westbeth Artists Housing was one of the first instances of adaptive reuse of industrial buildings for artistic and residential use in the country. The buildings opened to resident artists, including dancers, musicians, actors, writers, visual artists, and filmmakers in 1970. The building also became home to a number of large cultural organizations such as Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the first LGBT synagogue in New York. Today the buildings are on the National Register and are a designated NYC landmark. They also remain the home and workplace of dozens of working artists.

Collapsed section of the West Side Elevated Highway, just north of 525 West Street, ca. 1975. On December 15, 1973 a section of the West Side Elevated Highway collapsed. 80 feet of the roadway fell to the street level below, along with a sedan and a dump truck. It is believed that the weight of the dump truck (more than 30 tons), which was carrying asphalt for highway roadwork, caused the collapse. (The truck was severely overloaded, with nearly 10 more tons than it should have been carrying.) Neither driver was seriously injured. This incident led to an investigation of the soundness of the elevated roadway. It was found to be serious defective and the road south of 46th Street was closed permanently.

53-55 Little West 12th Street ca. 1970 On the other side of the High Line, just outside the Gansevoort Market Historic District, sits two old three-story rowhouses at 53 and 55 Little West 12th Street. Now home to the Brass Monkey, a popular restaurant and bar, the two little buildings sit by themselves. Looming in the background is the soaring Standard Hotel, designed by the Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Architects), and built in 2009. The contrast of these historic load-bearing brick rowhouses and the “floating” curtain-wall glass of the posh Standard Hotel speaks to the ever-changing character of this neighborhood. By going back in time a mere 25 years through the 1989 “then” photograph, we can see how this little section of the Meatpacking District has changed. I am particularly drawn to the “ghost town” quality of this photograph. Anything but abandoned, however, the district thrived not as a trendy club scene, but as a neighborhood full of vendors transporting goods in and out of warehouses. While a good portion of the area is now protected through the landmark designation of the Gansevoort Market Historic District we successfully fought for in 2003, the buildings on Little West 12th Street featured in the “then” photograph were not included. Of the four (built in 1888), only nos. 53 and 55 remain today. Their neighbors at nos. 51 and 57, oddly enough, were the more intact of the group with their pressed metal cornices still present in 1989 (the surviving middle buildings once had similar cornices). At the time, 51-55 Little West 12th Street operated as a meat processing plant with offices and cold storage facilities; no. 57 was part of the wholesale meat market at 20 Tenth Avenue around the corner. The surviving buildings at 53 and 55 have lost their metal canopy, and the triangular parapet of no. 55 has since been leveled. Although these parapets were not original to either building, it is likely they were added in 1930 when major alterations occurred inside each building (replacing cornices with stepped parapets was common in this era). These two little survivors have faced a lot of change over the years, but, even still, they continue to play a part in the neighborhood’s evolution. Be sure to look their way on your next walk along the High Line.

Formerly the Bell Telephone Laboratories Complex, the Westbeth Arts Complex is a group of buildings that takes up an entire city block. Westbeth is significant not only as the former home to one of the world’s most prestigious telecommunications research organizations but also as the first and largest publicly- and privately-funded artists’ housing project in the United States. Westbeth is a pioneer of large-scale industrial rehabilitation and adaptive reuse.

Few neighborhoods in New York can claim as rich a tradition of social advocacy as Greenwich Village. This collection documents the homes and lives of a few of them.

West Washington Market, August 18, 1936. West Washington Market consisted of ten two-story brick buildings between the piers and West Street, west of the Gansevoort Market Stand, an enormous, open-air produce market. Access lanes ran between the buildings (Loew Avenue is pictured, at left), which were erected in the 1880s to replace an earlier market complex. West Washington Market was demolished in the 1950s and replaced by the Gansevoort Garbage Terminal, where garbage was loaded onto barges to be dumped off-shore. The garbage terminal closed in 1981, but the site is still occupied by the Sanitation Department.

Village Preservation places plaques on sites in our neighborhoods to mark the locations of historically significant events, organizations, places, or figures. Click here to learn more about our plaque program, including upcoming unveiling.

53 Gansevoort Street, 1936. This triangular building (seen at its most narrow near Ninth Avenue) was constructed in 1887 for Robert and Ogden Goelet. Designed by Joseph M. Dunn, the five-story, store and loft building, housed dozens of food and meat manufacturers and purveyors through the 19th and 20th century. The Goelet family (whose ownership of the property began prior to this building in 1847) held onto the building until 1942. Today the food history of building remains seen in the faded painted logos of its facade which note "BURNHAM'S CLAM CHOWDER" and "NEW ENGLAND BISCUIT WORK."

Spanning over a century of architectural styles from the 1860s to 1960s, with a stellar renovation in the 1970s by Richard Meier, the Bell Laboratories Building Complex is an amazing example of adaptive reuse. The oldest building in the complex was constructed in the vernacular Italianate style circa 1860 to house the Hook’s Steam-Powered Factory. It is one of the last remaining 19th-century industrial buildings on the Hudson Riverfront. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the complex served as the headquarters for Bell Laboratories and bore witness to parts of the Manhattan Project and innovations including the first television broadcast. When Bell Laboratories vacated the property in the early 1960s, the complex fell into disrepair and found itself at the mercy of an aggressive Urban Renewal Program. Jane Jacobs spoke on behalf of the West Village Committee at a townhall discussing the demolition of Bell Laboratories, arguing that the complex suffered only from negligible blight and that it would be unconscionable to demolish it. Thankfully, Bell Laboratories escaped this fate, with an innovative plan to convert the historic structure into a hybrid work/live artists’ studios complex. In 1968, the J.M. Kaplan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts provided $1 million in seed money to purchase the former Bell Laboratories site for the Westbeth Artists’ Housing project. The adaptive reuse project was designed by Richard Meier, who was inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation in Marseilles. Meier created 383 single-story and duplex residential units, gallery spaces, dance and theater performing spaces, and common studio spaces in the basement and the Section I (former Hook’s Steam-powered Factory) building. The Bell Laboratories complex showcases the evolution of the West Village from a gritty industrial hub to a hot spot for art and architecture.

Worker with hand truck crosses West 14th Street amid a jumble of delivery trucks, ca. 1980s. The camera is facing east, from about the point where Washington Street meets West 14th. At right, on the south side of the street, a branded truck is visible at the loading dock of the Imperial Lamb and Veal Co. Today, the building is occupied by retail storefronts for clothing brands.

James Baldwin Residence ca. 1930 James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924 and became a celebrated writer and social critic in his lifetime, exploring complicated issues such as racial, sexual, and class tensions, as a gay African-American man. Baldwin spent some of his most prolific writing years living in Greenwich Village and wrote of his time there in many of his essays, such as "Notes of a Native Son". Many of Baldwin's works address the personal struggles faced by not only black men but of gay and bisexual men, amid a complex social atmosphere. His second novel, Giovanni's Room, focuses on the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men. It was published in 1956, well before gay rights were widely supported in America. His residence from 1958 to 1963 was 81 Horatio Street. A historic plaque memorializing his time there was unveiled on October 7, 2015.

60-74 Gansevoort Street, ca. 1980. The buildings at 60-68 and 70-74 Gansevoort Street were constructed by the firm of Voorhees, Walker, Foley & Smith in the early 1940s. The one-story building at the corner (nos 70-74) was constructed for the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank and served as a freight truck depot before becoming a wholesale meat market building in 1950. The two-story building at left (nos. 60-68) is the alteration of a 19th century structure. Constructed in 1881 as a five-story neo-Grec tenement, the building was reduced by three floors and converted into a market building in 1940, complete with metal canopy, a tell-tale feature of the market buildings.

505-507 West Street, ca. 1929. The Jane, formerly known as the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute, is a landmark building that was originally designed as a hotel for sailors. Constructed in 1907-08, the structure was designed by William A. Boring, also the architect of the immigration station on Ellis Island. His designs for the building include a chapel, concert hall, and a bowling alley. On April 19, 1912, the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute hosted a memorial service for surviving sailors rescued from the Titanic. The hotel was also used to house survivors while the American inquest into the sinking was held. In 1944, the YMCA took over the building. It has since taken on a number of different uses. During a period in the mid-1980s, the American drag performer RuPaul lived in the tower of the hotel. In 2000, the building was designated a New York City landmark.

Bell Telephone Laboratories Complex ARCHITECT: Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz; McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin; Warren B. Sanford; Richard Meier DATE: 1860-1903 STYLE: Neo-Classical 45-465 West Street, 137-169 Bank Street, 51-77 Bethune Street, and 734-754 Washington Street, Manhattan. Built c. 1860; 1896-1903, Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz, architect, Marc Eidlitz & Son, builder; 1924-26, McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin, architect, Tidewater Building Co., builder; 1929, Warren B. Sanford, engineer, Turner Construction Co., builder; 1931-34 alterations, Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, architect; and 1968-70 conversion, Richard Meier, architect. The Bell Telephone Laboratories Complex, occupying an entire city block in Manhattan’s Far West Village, is highly significant as the site of one of the world’s most prestigious telecommunications research organizations, where research work that resulted in many significant innovations and inventions was conducted, and later, as the first and largest publicly- and privately-funded artists’ housing project in the United States, as well as a pioneering large-scale industrial rehabilitation project. The Western Electric Co. built an office and factory building for telephone-related equipment (1896-1903) at 455-465 West Street, 149 Bank Street, and 734-742 Washington Street. After 1913, the building ceased as a manufacturing plant and was largely the headquarters of Western Electric’s Engineering Department. In 1925, it became Bell Telephone Laboratories for research and development for both the American Telegraph & Telephone Co. and Western Electric Co. After Bell Labs vacated the property in 1966, Roger L. Stevens, first chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, conceived of the complex as a pilot project of subsidized, affordable studio living quarters for artists, which was substantially supported and inaugurated by the J.M. Kaplan Fund. It was converted in 1968-70 into Westbeth Artists’ Housing, the first major work by architect Richard Meier, with 383 residential and work studio units, as well as gallery, performance, and commercial spaces, and a park.

One of New York’s most beloved and iconic landmarks, the Flatiron Building is known for (among other things) its unique shape. But of course, the corner of 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue isn’t the only place in Manhattan where streets intersect at quirky angles. In fact, the Village’s off-the-grid streets are full of them. More information can be found here.

New York Biscuit Stables at 445 West 14th Street ca. 2002 This red brick Romanesque Revival building has a long and storied history. According to the designation report, this land was owned by the Astors from 1819 to 1919. It was first owned John J. Astor I, then the Astor Estate until partition in 1878, then John Jacob Astor III, and finally William Waldorf Astor. According to the Daytonian, on June 14, 1892 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported Astor’s intention to build a stable on the site for the New York Biscuit Company. The building was designed by the prominent architect Thomas R. Jackson, who was well known as one of the designers of the rebuilt Trinity Church in 1839. Around the time that Waldorf Astor passed away in 1919, the National Biscuit Company began purchasing properties in the area that it had been leasing from the Astor Estate. 445 West 14th Street was one such property, sold to the National Biscuit Company in 1920. In the 1920s the building was converted to a garage, which housed an innovative fleet of electric cars for the manufacturing giant, as well as a warehouse with offices. The National Biscuit Company also purchased the entire two blocks from 15th to 16th Streets, Ninth to Eleventh Avenues, which would become the largest baking manufacturing complex in the world. Of course 445 West 14th Street didn’t stay in the cookie-making business forever. The National Biscuit Company, which had changed their name to Nabisco in 1941, moved to New Jersey in 1958. 445 West 14th Street was sold in 1959 to the Industry City Realty Co., which used it as a warehouse. It was sold to Ceco Studios, LLC. in 1995. Ceco Studios operates the High Line Stages here, in the adjoining 439 West 14th Street, and in several other buildings in the area. This is one of Manhattan’s largest sound stages.

Fire at the Cunard Steamship Line Pier (#54) at the foot of West 13th Street; May 6, 1932. The fire, which likely began in the pier's boiler room, caused an estimated $2 million in damage. The sole fatality, in a touch of dark irony, was Lt. Col. Ralph A. Kluge, the architect and engineer who had designed the purportedly fireproof pier. Kluge, who had come to view the fire, was struck in the back of head and killed when a fire hose came uncoupled from its hydrant.

American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute ARCHITECT: William A. Boring DATE: 1907-08 STYLE: Neo-Classical This building was constructed in 1907-08 to the handsome neo-Classical style design of architect William A. Boring. The American Seaman’s Friend Society, established in New York City in 1828, was one of a number of nineteenth-century religious organizations concerned with improving the social and moral welfare of seamen throughout the U.S. and abroad. After the luxury liner Titanic sank in 1912, surviving crew members received care here.

As steamship travel become faster and safer, tourism from New York and the old world became increasingly fashionable for those that could afford it. In this edition of our Interior Life series, we're swapping buildings for boats, examining three of the luxurious ocean liners that ferried passengers across the Atlantic: the S.S. Paris, the S.S. Ile De France, and the S.S. Normandie. All built by the French Line, these three ships made Compagnie Générale Transatlantique famous and marked a new age in trans-oceanic travel.

The Carey Lithograph Company building, to the west of elevated railroad track construction, 1933. Following the demolition of buildings along Washington Street to make way for elevated tracks, the Carey building was the only structure in the square block bounded by West, Gansevoort, Washington, and Horatio Streets not owned by the Manhattan Refrigerating Company.