Sex and the City

14. The Meatpacking District

New York, NY

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The Meatpacking District. Does this sound like a place where the Diane Von Furstenberg store would be, where Carrie calls Samantha to tell her she's engaged? It is indeed the place for the announcement in the film. This area, once Fort Gansevoort, was developed around 1840, when row houses and townhouses were built. Alongside these residences were freight yards, carpentry businesses, lumber yards, paint works, and more. After the Civil War, in the 1870s, people did not want to live in this area. Industrialization continued, and the less fortunate moved into multifamily dwellings that were replacing single-family homes. In the 1880s, markets sprung up over the old freight yards, selling produce, dairy, and meat. By 1900, there were 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants. By the 1920s, meat was the main industry here, thus the name, the Meatpacking District. The store belonging to Diane Von Furstenberg, the inventor of the wrap dress, is also the makeshift "restaurant" where the final scene of the movie - when the girls wish Samantha a happy 50th birthday - was filmed. The exterior shot of the same restaurant was of the meatpacking district furniture store Vitra. Vitra's furniture is made in Switzerland, and it is said that their work is motivated by "a diligent design process that brings together the company's engineering excellence with the creative genius of leading international designers."