NYC Garment District

gman41 · Mar 31, 2014

On a recent trip to Manhattan this past Friday I found myself in the former garment district located around 29th street. The neighborhood has declined greatly and I was among a handful,of people on the streets of that area. Had it not been Friday afternoon at around 2 pm I might have been a little nervous.

All of the shops, the ones left at least, now seem to be selling wholesale hats from China! and beads and costume jewelry. All wholesale and saw at least a half dozen shops selling hookahs and glass pipes wholesale too.

The buildings now are being turned into high rise residential units as the industry has long left the country and there is no other use for them.

It is a shame what has happened to our country and yet the prices for these clothes are still high even though they are made overseas for nothing in sweat shops. These are things the younger people will never realize and just accept as normal and move on as the call us lost in the past and other names.

dudewuttheheck · Mar 31, 2014

Well now I know not to go there with my fiancé when I go to NYC this May. I think I'll try the famous NYC thrift shops instead. That is a great shame.

tropicalbob · Apr 1, 2014

I used to walk through there on my way to work back in the 70's. It was like a beehive back then. One day when I went to step off the curb I heard a lot of shouting coming from a side street. It was the undercover cops busting a bunch of garment thieves stealing whole racks of women's gowns. I guess it was the stuff that "fell off the truck" and kept the New Jersey housewives happy. My cousin was the desk sergeant in that precinct and told me it was a million-dollar business.

gman41 · Apr 1, 2014

So many other jobs were effected too such as truck drivers, delis who fed the workers, couriers, and anyone else who would support the neighborhood industry.

I was between Broadway and seventh ave. If there is more to see in the area I did not see it nor am I aware of it.

I certainly did not see anyone pushing racks of clothes or any loading of merchandise going on. I do wonder how these stores make the rent and can only assume they could be doing illegal activity on the side.

I cannot see how anyone believes that sending these jobs overseas made the lives of the few people who get them, better. Most were done by immigrants here at union scale and although the conditions were not always great here, they still were way better than anywhere overseas they use now.

casechopper · Apr 1, 2014

I do some purchasing (for resale) from guys with shops in that area. It's a very tough business with tiny space, high rent and not much retail traffic. The real money is in wholesale and that's what keeps them afloat. Most of the shops are owned by immigrants from India and Pakistan who are willing to work much harder for less money than most Americans that were raised here.

skyvue · Apr 9, 2014

I'm not sure the garment district was ever a retail hub -- it was where clothes were designed and made (still is, to a certain degree, but you're right that that activity has declined precipitously). The little shops you speak of are wholesale shops (and I think many of them always were). I'm not sure there was much for a tourist to see in the garment district in the 1930s or '40s, either -- except for more people passing by with racks of clothes than there are today.

As for safety, you had nothing to worry about. NYC has the lowest crime rate of any big city in the country, and certainly midtown Manhattan is safe (though anything can happen at a given time in a given place, of course -- life's random that way).

Seb Lucas · Apr 15, 2014

Don't know if this helps but the same thing happened here and continues to happen. Trade and customers seem to value cheap over everything else so most of our manufacturing has gone. Overseas sweatshops where children can be paid nothing even as they loose their fingers supply us with what we seem to want. Our last car company is closing now. Our garment and shoe districts went 30 years ago. Oh well, at least we know we have a free market.

CaramelSmoothie · Apr 17, 2014

gman41 said:
I cannot see how anyone believes that sending these jobs overseas made the lives of the few people who get them, better. Most were done by immigrants here at union scale and although the conditions were not always great here, they still were way better than anywhere overseas they use now.

It's just the way things are. The pursuit of cheap labor is always a constant with the business establishment in this country since its beginning as well as other countries around the world, I've given up bytching about it.

Tomasso · Apr 17, 2014

CaramelSmoothie said:
It's just the way things are. The pursuit of cheap labor is always a constant with the business establishment in this country since its beginning as well as other countries around the world, I've given up bytching about it.

Yeah, cheap labor has been a quest of humankind from time immemorial. Look who built the Great Pyramids, the Coliseum, the Great Wall of China, etc, etc,...............

gman41 · Apr 18, 2014

Cheap labor or slave labor while CEOs of these companies make millions a year and are treated like royalty.

I guess the next question is this,

So does it mean the same to own these labels, if they are made in a sweat shop in Bangladesh as are clothes from Walmart, then what is the difference.

alanfgag · Apr 18, 2014

gman41 said:
On a recent trip to Manhattan this past Friday I found myself in the former garment district located around 29th street. The neighborhood has declined greatly and I was among a handful,of people on the streets of that area. Had it not been Friday afternoon at around 2 pm I might have been a little nervous...

The garment district is much larger and more diverse than what you encountered. Visit the wholesale showrooms on Broadway in the 30s - shop for fabrics. There are also plenty of sweatshops tucked into buildings in lower Manhattan. They will be harder to find and visit. There is much more to see - best way to explore is to have something you are hunting for. And as Skyvue says, it is not a dangerous area... just be prepared for a rainbow of colors and nationalities.

gman41 · Apr 21, 2014

I am a big enough boy to know that where I am is a bit dangerous regardless of what skin color the people are around me. Please do not tell us that you never get nervous about an area or person around you. Please do not tell us you make zero judgements about an area where you look to rent, or vacation at, or buy a home in, or send your children to off to play at.

I would most certainly be a bit careful there. The streets were empty except for a few people in the afternoon on a warmer day and men milling around the area were approaching younger people offering to sell them things.

alanfgag · Apr 22, 2014

Apologies if I was unclear in my response to your original post. My point was not to presuppose one's personal safety precautions in the neighborhood, rather that there is more to the garment district and NYC fashion industry than one can see from the street level storefronts in the area you mention.

cheers,
Alan

Tomasso · Apr 22, 2014

Seems like just the other day that he Garment District was teeming with activity.....

Seb Lucas · Apr 24, 2014

alanfgag said:
Apologies if I was unclear in my response to your original post. My point was not to presuppose one's personal safety precautions in the neighborhood, rather that there is more to the garment district and NYC fashion industry than one can see from the street level storefronts in the area you mention.

cheers,
Alan

Wish the same were true here.

MrBern · May 1, 2014

Sorry you felt uncomfortable. But this is nothing new. The Garment District in NYC is shrinking & in general is a little further uptown from 29thST.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/nyregion/20garment.html

I work closer to 40th St where you see more little button shops closing all the time.
Its a distinct concern that if garment manufacture in NYC goes extinct, the designers will flee the city.
But its the 21st Century & there are no guarantees.
Next time check Yelp or a website for the latest on the area
http://www.shopthegarmentdistrict.com/p/speakeasy-tours-for-2013.html

gman41 said:
On a recent trip to Manhattan this past Friday I found myself in the former garment district located around 29th street. The neighborhood has declined greatly and I was among a handful,of people on the streets of that area. Had it not been Friday afternoon at around 2 pm I might have been a little nervous.

All of the shops, the ones left at least, now seem to be selling wholesale hats from China! and beads and costume jewelry. All wholesale and saw at least a half dozen shops selling hookahs and glass pipes wholesale too.

The buildings now are being turned into high rise residential units as the industry has long left the country and there is no other use for them.

It is a shame what has happened to our country and yet the prices for these clothes are still high even though they are made overseas for nothing in sweat shops. These are things the younger people will never realize and just accept as normal and move on as the call us lost in the past and other names.

tropicalbob · May 1, 2014

I don't get the concern with the crime situation in the garment district, which is no more dangerous than any other part of Manhattan, probably less so.

carldelo · May 14, 2014

The assumption seems to be that condos are coming in because the fashion industry is leaving, which is not really the case. The unrestricted inflation of real estate in NYC routinely drives generations-old businesses from their traditional neighborhoods. The wholesale fashion businesses just can't keep up with the hunger for higher rents in midtown - the only thing viable seems to be high-end residential real estate.

Not many people realize that there is virtually no regulation of commercial real estate in NYC. Rents can increase by any amount - my wife had a gallery in the Chelsea art district --- when the lease came up the first time, the increase was 50%. The second time, it was going to be 70% on top of that, so she had to move the business to another neighborhood.

Now, around half the Chelsea galleries are out of business, and condo buildings are going up where their rental properties were. Ironically, the large building my wife was in with 20 other galleries has been taken over by the fashion industry, priced out of midtown. The same thing happened in Soho years back - it started being taken over by galleries and artist's lofts in the 60s and 70s when manufacturing was priced out of the area. After 20 years, the galleries and artists could no longer afford it, so they moved to Chelsea, and Soho is now filled with Prada, Chanel and 5+ million dollar loft apartments. I'd guess the same fate is almost here in Chelsea, it's been about 20 years after all.

NYC Garment District

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