The last authentic Meatpacking District signs?

Could these really be the final remnants of the meat purveying industry that existed for decades at the splintered ends of far West 14th Street?

Super City Wholesale Meats decamped in December 2012 after occupying this spot on West 13th Street since 1979, the Sawkill Lumber Company tells us.

The sign remains, lending authenticity to retailers looking to move into the newly rebranded construction site 837 Washington Street.

Manhattan Hotel Supply Company was (is?) at 447 West 13th Street “for 4 Generations.”

They were among the “160 thriving meat-related businesses operating between 18th and Bank Streets,” in 1974, this illuminating 1997 New York cover story on the beginnings of Meatpacking gentrification explains.

Take a look at the article—a lot has changed in 16 years.

Spooky outlines of long-gone Manhattan buildings

New and old New York collide on the sides of buildings all over the city. Sometimes the faded pattern of a dormer window or chimney is visible for years, other times just a days before developers cover these remnants forever.

The building that once stood here on the corner of Greenwich and Vestry Streets in Tribeca, below, doesn’t look fancy. It was probably just a regular walk-up with six or eight apartments in what had been a neighborhood of light industry for most of the 20th century.

But it sure left a formidable impression.

I love the sloping roof on this long-gone building on Washington Place in the Meatpacking District, below. Was it a garage? Warehouse? Meat packager?

I have no idea when it went down, but it’s being obliterated forever in favor of another restaurant or boutique or luxury hotel.

On 31st Street near Fifth Avenue is the imprint of a sturdy chimney and a roof on a slight incline. A coat of paint almost covers most of it up, but a sliver remains of what was once someone’s home.

The best thing about this bulldozed building on East 29th Street? The phantom smoke coming out of the pattern of a chimney!

The sweet treats once manufactured in New York

Contemporary New York boasts of its artisanal gourmet chocolatiers and confectioners.

But decades ago, the city was home to big factories pumping out some of the cheap sweets that are iconic old-school brands today.

Like Tootsie Rolls. Invented by a Brooklyn candy maker in 1896 and named after his daughter, these chewy candies used to be produced by the Sweets Company of America in a factory at 325-329 West Broadway.

That factory has sat empty for years, but as you can see from the photo, a developer has big plans: it’s set to become luxury condos called the Chocolate Factory, reports Curbed.

Looks like the same fate is in store for the former Life Savers factory at Eleventh Avenue and 20th Street.

This is where the minty candies shaped like life preservers got their start in 1913, before the Mint Products Company moved the factory to Queens in 1916, according to Businessweek.com.

The new name of these opulent residences: the Lifesaver Lofts, of course!

Take a stroll through Chelsea Market, at Ninth Avenue and 15th Street, and you’re constantly reminded that this high-end foodie heaven was once part of the factory complex owned by the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco, since the late 19th century.

It’s where millions of Oreos, Nutter Butters, Vanilla Wafers, Animal Crackers, and Fig Newtons were produced, packaged, and sent across the world.

Until the 1950s, that is, when Nabisco began baking all of its signature cookies in New Jersey and moved out.

[Left: A Nabisco building on 11th Avenue in 1913; Library of Congress]

Where survivors of the Titanic docked in 1912

If all went according to plan, the R.M.S. Titanic would have pulled into the White Star Line’s Pier 59 off 18th Street at the Hudson River.

But fate intervened. So instead, the 700 or so survivors picked up by the R.M.S. Carpathia docked in New York around nine p.m. on April 18 at Pier 54, the Cunard Line pier, just south of 14th Street.

There they were greeted by thousands of panicked relatives and newspaper reporters, desperate for details on who had survived and what happened to the so-called unsinkable ship.

The lettering is ghostly and faint, but you can still see both company names on this rusted old metal entrance.

Former rivals, the White Star and the Cunard lines merged in the 1930s, trying to stave off bankruptcy.

Pier 54 had another tangle with a maritime disaster. It’s the port where the R.M. S. Lusitania sailed from in 1915 before being torpedoed.

Here it is arriving at Pier 54 in an undated photo. And yep, that’s the infamous Liberty Inn when it was a sailor’s dive known as the Strand Hotel.)

Nell’s: The trendiest nightclub in 1980s New York

Where did rock stars, artists, Wall Street traders, models, and the people who hung around them in mid-1980s Manhattan go to mingle?

Nell’s, a former electronics store-turned-nightclub on West 14th Street near Eighth Avenue. It was supposed to be a throwback of sorts, a retreat from the Studio 54 kind of excess.

The space cultivated the look of an elegant, Victorian gentleman’s club—one with a velvet rope, tough door policy, and lines stretching around the block.

This ad, which ran in the November 1993 issue of Interview gives a quick look at some of the regulars (Quentin Crisp? Salmon Rushdie?). By the early 1990s, however, Nell’s had lost some of its cachet, reports a 1994 New York Times article.

Nell’s closed in 2004, but will always be remembered as a 1980s hangout. Even Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, was a regular.

Faded food ads on Gansevoort Street

The ground floor of 53-61 Gansevoort Street has been scrubbed over and boutique-ized like so much of the rest of the Meatpacking District. 

So it’s a treat to see that the three-story faded ad on the side of the building is still mostly legible. “Clam Chowder Clam Bouillon” reads the letters across the top floor. The next ad is too difficult to make out, but the second-story one is “New England Biscuit Works.”

The company was an early tenant of the building, constructed on this triangular spot in 1887. At that time the Meatpacking District was known as Gansevoort Market, the city’s designated spot for open-air meat and vegetable markets.

Something about 53 Gansevoort Street caught photographer Berenice Abbott’s eye in 1936, prompting her to take this picture of the building. 

Though the ads appear to be different, the street scene, with men unloading trucks, looks the way the daytime Meatpacking District did up until the late 1990s—when the neighborhoof was still made up of, well, meatpackers.

The opening of the West Side Express Highway

Planned in the 1920s to ease New York’s traffic hell, the West Side Express Highway opened in various stages beginning in 1930. Also known as the Miller Elevated, it stretched from downtown to 72nd Street.

It looks pretty and spotless in this 1930 postcard. By the 1960s, it was rusted out and in disrepair, and huge chunks occasionally fell onto the streets beneath it. Wisely, the city tore it down in the 1970s and 1980s.

Taking a walk down the Village’s Charles Lane

Charles Lane, a narrow alley from Washington to West Street in the West Village, is all that remains of the northern boundary of Newgate State Prison, which stood at the foot of the Hudson here from 1797 until the 1820s. Also known as Pig Alley, Charles Lane was later paved with unique stones not seen elsewhere in the city, according to the Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation.

Here’s Charles Lane in the 1930s, photographed by Berenice Abbott. Is that the old Ninth Avenue El that ran along Greenwich Street, or is it a remnant of the High Line?

Charles Lane today is surrounded by pricey West Village real estate, but it doesn’t look all that different, and the paving stones remain the same. Amazing it wasn’t bulldozed and turned into the Charles Lane Condos:

The masks near the Meatpacking District

I’ve always wondered about this 5-story apartment house on far West 13th Street. Though you can’t exactly tell from this rainy-day photo, the building, constructed in 1925, is painted blue on an otherwise drab block, and the facade features these two symbols of the theater. Why the masks are there is a mystery. Perhaps an actor or director was the original owner.