An exchange floor off West 47th Street: dealer booths under green glass shades, loupes and scales, chandeliers turning, jewel niches with lit velvet, a vault standing open on a wall of safe deposit boxes. The New Yorkers hang in gilt, like gems.
New York's diamond trade began around 1790 on Maiden Lane near the port, where more than 300 jewelry firms filled two blocks by the early 1900s. After the 1929 crash many jewelers moved to Canal Street and the Bowery. In 1923 broker Fenimore Goode began putting up buildings made for the diamond trade on West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and in the 1940s European Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis filled them. Today about 90 percent of the diamonds entering the United States pass through the block.
Source · 47th Street Business Improvement District ↗
Two aisles of dealer booths with banker's lamps and glass cases, the central spine of booths back to back, arched jewel niches in red velvet along both walls, two crystal chandeliers turning, walnut panelling and a coffered ceiling, the round vault door open on the safe deposit wall, the lit street of DIAMONDS signs outside. Mood: midnight appraisal. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.