Vintage Photos: NYC’s Meatpacking District in the 1990s

Atlas Meats  was located across from what is now The Standard Hotel. It was demolished in 2011.

Of the neighborhood then, Alessandrini writes:

In the mid-nineties, this area was dark and desolate with the semi-abandoned warehouses of meat purveyors. In the early morning, the butchers going to work were crossing night creatures finishing their shifts. There were a few clubs, hidden on the meat market’s dark corners. Jackie 60 and of course the infamous Vault and Manhole in the Triangle Building. After going to the clubs like Nell’s on 14th street, Florent on Gansevoort was a real treat. A fun coffee shop with crazy drag waitresses and other strangers of the night. And also great burgers and breakfast for hungry nightclubbers crashing in the morning light.

This building is now the restaurant SEA with outdoor seating, located across from the Standard Biergarten. The beams were retained but painted in a more innocuous gray:

The Hellfire Club was a BDSM sex club located in the basement of the building on the triangular plot at Ninth Avenue, Hudson Street and West 14th Street which houses Dos Caminos and 675 Bar:

Hogs & Heifers, closed in 2015, at 859 Washington Street:

Walmir Meats at 839 Washington Street, next to SEA and across from The Standard, is finally being converted into this twisty office and retail building:

See more from our Vintage Photography column. See more from Gregoire Alessandrini.