By Ted Brooks
The Annex Markets in Chelsea is going belly up, yet another victim of gentrification.
The 40-plus year old Chelsea Flea Market reportedly lost its lease and closed up shop for good yesterday.
Nostalgia hung heavy in the air on the final day. As recounted in the New York Times, “Andy Warhol would arrive at the flea markets on the West Side of Manhattan before noon on Sundays in an old Dodge convertible. It was the 1980s, and on weekends, the parking lots near West 25th Street and Sixth Avenue were filled with vendors selling tchotchkes, collectibles and fine antiques.
“A friend told him you need to go to the flea market to get new and great ideas,” said Alan Boss, who opened the first space in 1976 and said he would often shoo away autograph-seeking fans as Warhol shopped,” the Times piece continued. “Mr. Boss watched Warhol build collections: “He bought vintage watches. He bought cookie jars. Nobody cared about cookie jars until he started collecting them.”
Annex Markets started in 1976 as a penny-jar investment on an estranged corner lot in Chelsea by native New Yorker Boss. “Having marshaled 11 vendors for the market’s first weekend, Boss shaped Annex into an outdoor shopping Mecca featuring 100s of vendors and known to treasure hunters worldwide,” it relates on its web site. “Annex Markets continued to evolve. Its venerable Chelsea Flea Market location remained a destination location for celebrities, prop masters, set designers, fashion designers, artists, antique-lovers, decorators, architects, and others. It was featured countless times in global print media and was the backdrop for movies and commercials.”
In 2006, after almost 30 years of outdoor commerce-delight and top-notch haggling, most of the original Annex locations along Sixth Avenue in the West 20s were displaced by high-rise residential buildings. Years later, in June 2014 and in its 20th year of operation, “The Garage closed—a casualty of real estate development—and its vendors merged with Boss’s outdoor market on the uptown side of West 25th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, Chelsea Flea Market (#chelseaflea),” the group added.
In January 2019 Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market consolidated with Chelsea Flea Market after nearly 16 years on West 39th Street.
“Once New York City’s largest flea market, that included seven separate lots over the years, the spaces were known for their fine antiques that occasionally landed in museum collections,” the Times added in its farewell salute. “It was the city’s version of famous bazaars like Portobello Road Market in London and the Marche aux Puces in Paris. The lots, which drew the city’s creative community, also helped to shape Chelsea into an arts district.”
