Fireplace Remodeling in Meatpacking District, NY

A Lenape trading station called Sapohanikan was on the riverbank, which, accounting for landfill, was located about where Gansevoort Street meets Washington Street today. The footpath that led from Sapohanikan inland to the east became the foundation for Gansevoort Street, which by accident or design aligns, within one degree, so that the Manhattanhenge phenomenon, where the setting sun crosses the horizon looking down the street, occurs at the spring and autumnal equinoxes. In recognition of this history, petitions were made to call the 14th Street Park “Saphohanikan Park”, although it appears no formal recognition was given.

The earliest development of the area now known as the Meatpacking District came in the mid-19th century. Before that it was the location of Fort Gansevoort and of the upper extension of Greenwich Village, which had been a vacation spot until overtaken by the northward movement of New York City. The irregular street patterns in the area resulted from the clash of the Greenwich Village street system with that of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which sought to impose a regular grid on the undeveloped part of Manhattan island.

Construction of residences in the neighborhood – primarily rowhouses and town houses, some of which were later converted into tenements – began around 1840, primarily in the Greek Revival style which was prominent at the time. By mid-century, with Fort Gansevoort replaced by freight yards of the Hudson River Railroad, a neighborhood developed which was part heavy industry and part residential – a pattern which was more typical of an earlier period in the city’s history but which was becoming less usual, as industry and residences began to be isolated in their own districts. In the western portion of the neighborhood, heavy industry such as iron works and a terra cotta manufacturer could be found, while lighter industry such as carpentry and woodworking, lumber yards, paint works, granite works and a plaster mill blended into the residential area. At the time of the Civil War the part of the district west of Ninth Avenue and Greenwich Street and above 10th Street was the location of numerous distilleries making turpentine and camphene, a lamp fuel.