New York City's Fur District consists of a few blocks in the western upper 20s and lower 30s, just south of Penn Station. It began vanishing 30-some years ago. In 1979, there were 800 manufacturers here, by 1989 there were 300, and today there are certainly much fewer.
Recalled furrier Nat Berkowitz to the Times in 1995, "It used to be that when you drove up the New York State Thruway to the Catskill resorts, there would be a mink stole hanging in every car window." Times changed. Fur lost much of its luster. Protesters protested.
There are still fur dealers here, but not as many as there used to be. I remember walking through in the evening when I worked near the area, looking into the fur traders' shops--not showrooms, but wholesale rooms--bare little spaces painted hospital green, filled with racks of pelts on hooks, where men in yarmulkes and shirtsleeves plied their trade. Are they still here?
What does remain, and what will remain long after the furriers have vanished completely, are the stone carvings on the buildings that mark this place as the Fur District. On 29th Street, a pair of gargoyle furriers do their work--in one, a squirrel appears to be biting the furrier's finger, in the other, a mink is either being skinned or given a spanking.
There are other such fur-related carvings in this neighborhood. On 30th, a pair of handsome foxes guard an elegant doorway.
Until the planned Bloombergian rezoning, which aims to completely transform the Fur District into an extension of upscale Chelsea (Amanda Burden seeks to "enliven" it), this area remains very much itself--a bit down at the heels, desolate, and still interesting to the passing eye with its barber schools and crummy eateries, its kung-fu dojos and music rehearsal spaces, its guitar shops, cigar shops, and second-story signmakers.
This swath of the old city still exists. For now.