Millinery District

Manhattan’s “Millininery District” is roughly an older term for what would be called the “Garment District” or “Garment Center,” between Fifth and Seventh Avenues and 28th-40th Streets.
   
   
Districts and Zones of New York City
Millinery District 
The blocks just below Bryant Park in Midtown South are lined with numerous loft buildings built in the first third of the 20th century. This extension of the Garment District specialized in production and wholesale selling of hats & hat-making materials.
 
NYC100
MILLINERY DISTRICT
By CHARLES REZNIKOFF
 
The clouds, piled in rows like merchandise,
become dark; lights are lit in the lofts;
the milliners, tacking bright flowers on straw shapes,
say, glancing out of the windows,
it is going to snow;
and soon they hear the snow scratching the panes. By night
it is high on the sills.

The snow fills up the footprints
in the streets, the ruts of wagons and of motor trucks.
Except for the whir of the car
brushing the tracks clear of snow,
the streets are hushed.
At closing time, the girls breathe deeply
the clean air of the streets
sweet after the smell of merchandise.

Written in 1936, copyright © 1977 by Marie Syrkin Reznikoff. Reprinted from “Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff,” with the permission of Black Sparrow Press.
(Reprinted in the New York Times, 25 January 1998—ed.)
 
24 May 1911, Puck, pg. 3:
BUSINESS IS BUSINESS EVERYWHERE, BUT IN THE NEW YORK MILLINERY DISTRICT BUSINESS IS EVERYTHING.

11 February 1923, New York Times,  pg. RE2:
REMARKABLE GROWTH OF GARMENT TRADE INDUSTGRY
MAKES CHANGES IN OLD HOTGEL AND THEATRE CENTRE
Marlborough Hotel, Now in the Heart of the Needle Trade and Millinery District, Will
Give Way This Year to a $3,000,000 Commercial Building Opposite
Greenwich Savings Bank’s Imposing New Home

7 April 1923, New York Times, pg. 23
An important deal in the millinery district was closed yesterday when the Denwood Realty Company, Robert Benenson President, resold the twelve-story store and loft building at 42 to 46 West Thirty-eight Street, on a plot 62 by 98.9, located between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

27 August 1929, New York Times, pg. 25:
Space in Millinery District Near
Sixth Avenue Is Lease.

The entire fourteenth floor at 55 West Thirty-ninth Street has been leased to Morris Gerber, Inc., by Harry Sands, who also arranged the subletting of 10,000 square feet of space at 43 West Thirty-sixth Street to the Jay Gee Hat Company.
 
2 May 1946, New York Times, pg. 38:
Sale in Millinery District
The business property at 35-37 West Thirty-eighth Street, i nthe heart of the millinery district between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americans, has been purchased by a client of Mervin Danzig.