Room 119 of 136 · 28TH STREET / FLOWER COLD ROOM · 1891

Before the flowers wake

A refrigerated botanical archive with bucket gardens and floating, frost-colored display fins.

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Before the flowers wake

The Flower District, the history

Wholesale cut flower dealers began gathering on West 28th Street in the late 1870s. George E. Bradshaw and John R. Hartman opened one of the first wholesale florist houses in 1891 at 53 West 28th Street, and Guttman and Raynor followed in 1894 at 101 West 28th Street. The trade spread from 23rd Street to 34th Street before settling between 25th and 29th Streets. At its height more than 200 wholesalers and suppliers worked the block, through Easter week 1895 and the snowstorm of January 1908.

Source · New York's Historic Floral District ↗

What the room is built from

Bucket flower banks; insulated door portal; suspended cold-room rails; slatted central aisle. Fictional flower-market interior. Mood: four in the morning. 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.

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