In a city that prizes the shiny and new new, The Whitney Museum’s $422 million headquarters at 99 Gansevoort St., adjacent to the High Line, is the hottest ticket in town.
But what was on that spot beforehand?
Kevin Walsh, urban historian, tour leader and proprietor of the website forgotten-ny.com, reminds us that the museum, stuffed with some of the most expensive art in the world, sits atop what once was Maggio Beef, at 820 Washington St., eventually torn down to make room for the maintenance and operations building of the Whitney. (During the early and mid-2000s, the original plan called for the Dia Museum to take over the overall site. When the Dia deal fell through, the Whitney stepped in.) Also demolished to make way for the Whitney was Premier Veal, whose building once served as a high-pressure water-pumping facility for the city -- one which was used to fight the Triangle Fire, according to site Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York.
A walk around the area near Little West 12th Street, Gansevoort Street and Washington Street on the day of the Whitney’s debut Saturday block party revealed mainly trendy restaurants, bars and clothing stores, not meat wholesalers.
The area was originally a residential one, but in the mid 19th century, the freight yards of the Hudson River Railroad (later absorbed into the New York Central) were built there, and a marketplace—originally a produce market—sprung up. In 1886, according to Forgotten New York, the city declared the area a public market.
By the turn of the century, advances in technology (notably refrigeration) made possible the rise of meat businesses. The construction of the High Line gave the meat business even more of a boost—an article in the July 4, 1937 edition of The New York Times mentioned the construction of the Cudahy Packing Co. freight terminal at Gansevoort Street. Trains went through an opening in the building, and sides of beef were loaded right off the freight cars. Another Times article, from April 8, 1949, describes plans for the city-owned Gansevoort Market Meat Center—which still exists.
Most of the other meatpacking firms, though, are long gone, plagued by rising rents. “As recently as 1986,” Ben Upham wrote in the Times in 2000, “the district had more than 120 meat firms. But today, few than half that number remain.” Soon afterward, sex clubs (such as the Hellfire Club), prostitutes, drug dealers, leather shops and dive bars moved in. Soon, though, gentrification began.
Still, there is one place where meatpacking still thrives, and it’s just north of the Whitney—the Gansevoort Market Meat Center, which the city runs as a co-op. It’s bounded by Washington Street, Little West 12th Street and 10th Avenue, and includes such firms as Weichsel Beef, London Meat, J.T. Jobbagy meats (which had a booth at the Whitney’s block party) and several others. Also found here is Hector’s Café and Diner, on Little West 12th Street.
The Whitney, as its billboards proclaim, is indeed “At Home in the Meatpacking.” But so are the ghosts of those 250 or so meat wholesalers of yesteryear—and the few that are still here.