Vanishing New York
by
Jeremiah Moss
Published 19 May 2017
David was a freelance magazine writer and Hammond was an entrepreneur, but they would become two of the city’s most celebrated citizen preservationists. They would also help to push the Meatpacking District into hyperdrive and radically change the face of Chelsea’s west side, from a scrappy neighborhood of blue-collar businesses to a shimmering pleasure dome for tourists and oligarchs, what many would call “Dubai on the Hudson.” In 1931, steelworkers began the construction of an elevated viaduct that would remove dangerous railroad tracks from the street and lift them thirty feet into the air. It was part of Robert Moses’s West Side Improvement project, and for the next half century, the elevated line would ferry freight cars into the city, carrying milk, eggs, meat, and produce to warehouses along the West Side.