July 2002

New York Trade Offs: Single Trade Districts
The Flower District

Everyone who walks through the gritty streets of the Flower District, in the upper 20s off Sixth Avenue, feels the same astonishment and delight at the explosion of color and fresh scent in that unlikely setting. The smallest and most threatened among the City's remaining single-trade districts, the Flower District embodies all the virtues and problems of streets essentially given over to one type of merchandise. Foremost among its pleasures is the purely sensuous: seeing and smelling plants and flowers in abundance. They seem doubly fragrant and brilliant set against the background of the dilapidated buildings where they are sold. It's also interesting to see one trade that's still conducted in a defiantly old. fashioned way.

While few of the structures lining 26th through 29th Streets just west of Sixth Avenue are especially distinguished, many are honest examples of commercial and domestic architecture from the last century and a half. Current occupants use them roughly; many are sure to come down when and if the florists abandon them.

The wholesale flower trade is shrinking. Smaller firms have disappeared; others have relocated to newer buildings away from the chaos of midtown. Gentrification and new construction are sweeping through this weary part of town as Manhattan real estate values rise, rendering the old structures less valuable than the dirt they stand on. Clutter and heavy traffic along these streets and sidewalks charm the occasional passerby, but they are a daily headache for the florists and other trades who use them. No business can long afford to remain where costs are high and operations difficult.

Flower District dealers recently formed a trade association, one of the goals of which is to find new quarters where its members will relocate. Efforts by the industry in the 1980s and 1990s to move en masse yielded no results. Because they do not all handle the same items, and because they trade among themselves, wholesale florists benefit by staying close together.

In the mid-nineteenth century, flowers became popular for display in upper-class homes and for general use on holidays. At first, they were brought to market directly by local growers, usually from Queens, Long Island, and New Jersey. Manhattan's first flower district arose at the foot of East 34th Street, where retailers went daily to supply their stores from growers' offerings. In the last quarter of the century, wholesale commission merchants entered the business as middlemen. Making a ready market for flowers, they eased the lives of growers and retail florists.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, most relocated to Sixth Avenue for its convenience to the grand stores of Ladies' Mile, the fashionable homes of Fifth Avenue, and the theaters, restaurants, and Brothels of the Tenderloin district, at the heart of which the Flower District sat. There it remains, though every economic force seems pitted against it. At least for the present, you may still enjoy a walk through this colorful little gem among New York neighborhoods.