Meatpacking District, Manhattan

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The Meatpacking District, officially known as Gansevoort Market, is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs roughly from West 14th Street south to Gansevoort Street, and from the Hudson River east to Hudson Street, although it has extended to the north to West 16th Street and east beyond Hudson Street in recent years.

History

By 1900, Gansevoort Market was home to 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants, but by the 1980s, it had also became known as a center for drug dealing and prostitution, particularly transsexuals.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the Meatpacking District went through a transformation. High-end boutiques such as Diane von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Scoop, and CALYPSO by Christiane Celle, restaurants such as Pasti's and Buddha Bar, and nightclubs such as Tenjune, One, G-Spa, Cielo, APT, Level V, and Kiss and Fly, all have recently opened in order to cater to young professionals and hipsters. In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District "New York’s most fashionable neighborhood".

By 2003, only 35 of the 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants present a century earlier remained in the area.

In September 2003, after three years of lobbying by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) established the Gansevoort Market Historic District. The LPC granted only part of their request: the new district excluded the neighborhood's waterfront, and the restrictions associated with the designation did not apply to the 14-story luxury hotel (the Hotel Gansevoort) which opened in April 2004. In 2007, GVSHP announced that New York State Parks Commissioner Carol Ash had approved adding the entire Meatpacking District, not just the city-designated Gansevoort Market Historic District, to the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.

References

External links

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Last updated on Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 00:00:57 PDT (GMT -0700)
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