Manhattan’s Toy District is between 21st and 27th streets, from the Avenue of the Americas to Madison Avenue. It is centered around the Toy Center at 200 Fifth Avenue (23rd Street). New York has hosted a industry “Toy Fair” for over one hundred years.
New York City Districts
Toy District
Located in the Flatiron District, the Toy District holds a number of toy manufacturers with toy showrooms. This area hosts the American International Toy Fair, an event organized by the Toy Industry Association every year.
Address: . New York NY USA
Fisher-Price
Fisher-Price Friends is located in bustling downtown Manhattan. Our offices cover two floors in the Barnes & Noble Building on 6th Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets. This area is also known as the Chelsea District or the Toy District and is the home of the International Toy Fair.
17 August 1990, New York Times, pg. C22:
As the bus moved down Broadway, he pointed out the garment district, the toy district and the insurance district, but a block or two later there was nary a word about the new neighborhood of renovated lofts, restaurants, advertising agencies and publishers that has grown up just south of the Flatiron Building.
8 February 1998, New York Times, pg. 33:
It is showtime with a vengeance at the American International Toy Fair, the most prestigious trade show of the $20 billion toy industry, which open tomorrow.
For weeks, throughout the six-block toy district in Manhattan, an area bounded by 21st and 27th Streets, Madison Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas, workers have been toiling to prepare the industry’s annual carnival, stage set and high-stakes crap shoot, in which companies gamble millions on attracting buyers, retailers and securities analysts.
12 February 2003, New York Times, “Taking Apart a Toy Fair And Hoping It Still Works” by Glenn Collins, pg. B3:
...to two floors of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and 400 more manufacturers will show their wares to buyers in showrooms in the toy district (21st to 27th Streets, from the Avenue of the Americas to Park Avenue South).
(...)
The first Manhattan Toy Fair took place in 1902, but the centennial could not be celebrated last year because the show was canceled in 1945, thanks to wartime manufacturing priotieis.
For much of a century, Toy Fair provided the equivalent of opening night for major toy lines. Although the fair began in hotel suites, it found a home in the Toy Center, at 200 Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.
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Above, Big Apple Corner at 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Google Maps. Stolen and missing, 2021-2024.
Above, John J. Fitz Gerald, from the Aug. 15, 1931, Binghamton (NY) Press, pg. 14.
Listen to Robert Emmerich introduce "The Big Apple," a hit song from 1937. Music written by Bob and performed by Tommy Dorsey's Clambake Seven with Bob on piano. Lyrics written by Buddy Bernier and sung by Edythe Wright. Audio provided by Dorothy Emmerich.
Also listen to a 1937 "The Big Apple" song by Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra. See a 1929 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald and a 1931 photo of John J. Fitz Gerald.
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