Chelsea Market is one of the top tourist destinations in the city.

This beautiful building houses some of the best food, shopping, and food-related shopping in the entire city. Before it became the New York icon that it currently is, the Chelsea Market was actually a factory for the National Biscuit Company, or as you may know it as, Nabisco. Even in its early days, this building brought about one of America’s most beloved treats, the Oreo Cookie. That’s right, even before its food court and foodie-mecca days, the soon to be Chelsea Market was already breaking into the culinary world.

Now the Nabisco Factory was massive, according to some sources, they created 50% of all the pastries made in the entirety of the United States, mostly due to their vertical process of baking. Then in the 1930’s, a revolutionary new technique of baking appeared. The Horizontal baking process, not only made it easier to make the pastries, but it needed more space. Eventually, the Nabisco company moved out to some suburbs in New Jersey.

For a long while, this building stood empty and abandoned.

That is until Erwin Cullen  purchased it of course! He renovated the building and pretty much made it into what it is today. This entire building, Chelsea Market as we know it now, helped revitalize the entire neighborhood, so remember that when you’re back outside on the rest of the tour!

Chelsea Market is a great place to go when you’re hungry. Just outside of the main hallway is Buddakan, a Chinese restaurant, but I promise you, you won’t find any take-out style dishes here. Instead you’ll find Chinese tapas; small plates ready to pack a powerful punch of flavor. Now as you walk into the actual building you’ll see a variety of stores. Anthropologie on the left, a high-end clothing store that you can even purchase furniture at, and on the right is an Italian themed cafeteria where you can get all sorts of pastas.