•
Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza is a park on the south side of 47th Street between First and Second Avenues. •
The Factory was
Andy Warhol's original New York City studio from 1963 to 1968, although his later studios were known as The Factory as well. The Factory was located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street, between
Second Avenue and
Third Avenue. • The top duplex of the Dyckman's Jewelry Exchange at 73 West 47th Street was
Russian emigrant artist
Alexander Ney's studio and home for four decades (1974–2015) following his
immigration from the
Soviet Union. • After opening in 1920 on West 45th Street, the
Gotham Book Mart later moved to 51 West 47th Street and then spent many years at 41 West 47th Street before moving to 16 East 46th Street. •
Vanderbilt Avenue is a short street that runs from
42nd Street to 47th Street, between
Park Avenue and
Madison Avenue. The street was built as the result of
construction of
Grand Central Terminal, and is named for the family of the terminal's original owners,
Cornelius Vanderbilt. Grand Central Terminal can be accessed via 47th Street through the "Northwest Passage", a -long corridor that runs parallel to the tracks, connecting to the Main Concourse by way of an entrance at the northeast corner of East 47th Street and Madison Avenue. • The portion of 47th Street between
Fifth Avenue and
Sixth Avenue is known as the
Diamond District, which hosts a kosher cafe, the
IDT Megabite Cafe. • An
NHL store stands at 1185 Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) between West 46th Street and West 47th Street. It is the only one of its kind in the country and has its own
Starbucks within the store. • The
TKTS booth, reconstructed and reopened in 2008, is located on 47th Street at
Duffy Square, between
Seventh Avenue and
Broadway. Theater-goers may purchase
Broadway theatre tickets at a discount of 25 to 50% for listed plays and musicals on the day of the shows. The
Morgan Stanley Building is located diagonally opposite to TKTS at Broadway and 47th Street. • There are four active Broadway theaters on West 47th Street between Sixth Avenue and
Eighth Avenue: the
Palace Theatre at the southeast corner of Broadway and 47th Street; the
Ethel Barrymore Theatre at 243 West 47th Street; the
Lena Horne Theatre, formerly the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, at 256 West 47th Street; and the
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, formerly the Biltmore Theatre, at 261 West 47th Street.
Diamond District The
Diamond District is a commercial stretch containing a series of jewellers' shops. The new Diamond District was formed when dealers moved north from an earlier district near
Canal Street and the
Bowery, created in the 1920s, and from a second district located in the
Financial District, near the intersection of
Fulton and
Nassau streets, which started in 1931, and also from the one-time jewelry district of
Maiden Lane, which had existed since the 18th century. A notable, long-time anomaly of the district was the famous
Gotham Book Mart, a bookstore, which was located at 41 West 47th Street from 1946 to 2004. The move uptown started in the 1920s when rents in Maiden Lane began increasing drastically as finance and insurance companies moved into the Financial District. By 1941, the Diamond Dealers Club—an exclusive club that acts as a
de facto diamond exchange and has its own
synagogue—officially made the move up to midtown as well. The area is one of the global hubs of the diamond business, as well as the premier center for jewelry shopping in the city. It is one of the largest diamond and jewelry districts in the United States, along with
Jewelers' Row, Philadelphia and
Los Angeles's Jewelry District, and it is the second oldest surviving jewelry district in the United States after Jewelers' Row in Philadelphia. Total receipts for the value of a single day's trade on the block average $400 million. An estimated 90% of diamonds in the United States enter through New York. There were some 3,500 independent businesses (cutting, polishing and sales) in the district in 2019. According to other sources, the district was home to more than 2,600 businesses in 2020, a majority of them were on the same block, many shop owners and managers of the district were Orthodox Jews. The wholesale business made up most of the $24.6 billion in annual sales in 2019. The industry employed 33,000 people, still predominantly Jews. Most businesses are located in booths at one of the 25 "exchanges" in the district. Commission based hawkers are a common sight and they usually solicit business for stores located on the street level. According to
The New York Times, the Diamond District has maintained a thriving, bazaarlike marketplace since the 1920s. Retailers with shops line the streets outside. At 50 West 47th Street is the
Gemological Institute of America which trains gem dealers. One distinguishing figure of the district is the diamond-motif street lights illuminating the corners. The NYC Diamond District holds three prominent trade interconnected buildings: the 580 Fifth Avenue Exchange, the DDC, Diamond Dealers Club, and
the International Gem Tower. It is close to other landmarks such as
Rockefeller Center and
Radio City Music Hall. "Visit 47th Street today, and the stylish pedestrians of Fifth and Sixth Avenues vanish. In their place are elderly, ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing black overcoats and fedoras; south and central Asians with traditional karakul hats; and gaggles of merchants shouting in languages from across the world ... Forty-seventh Street is, in fact, a thick network of middlemen, with diamantaires buying and selling large caches of diamonds much like stock brokers..." ==Transportation==