Can Manhattan’s Meatpacking District return as a fashion retail hub?

A small huddle of cobblestoned streets on the western edge of downtown Manhattan located about halfway between the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels symbolizes the fortunes of NYC, a city in which the only constant is change. The Meatpacking District was first a native American trading post, then a military fort, before it became the center of meat purveyance in the late-1800s. Gansevoort Plaza’s confluence of four streets was home to the hustle and bustle of butchers in white coats, like immigrant Philipp Ottmann who brought his family’s meat cutting skills from Southwest Germany and set up business at 1-5 Little West 12th Street, next door to what is now the Gansevoort Hotel. French restaurant Bagatelle, which has locations in Saint-Tropez, Mykonos, London, and St Barts stands in the spot of Ottmann’s business today, and accommodates sleek, well-heeled urbanites who spill out of town cars. Back then the zone’s higgledy-piggledy streets, unusual in Manhattan’s grid layout, were filled with trucks being loaded with chops, smoked hams, loins to be delivered to the nation’s hotels, restaurants and airlines. At the turn of the century, 250 businesses made it a major meat hub, now there are less than ten.