A Brief History Of Sunset Park’s Meatpacking District

When we think of a Meat Packing District, the neighborhood in lower Manhattan with exclusive nightclubs and high end stores usually comes to mind. What most people don’t know, however, is that Sunset Park was once host to a bustling meat industry.

One of the last vestiges of that relatively short-lived era is King Solomon Foods, a fifth-generation wholesale meat, poultry, and pork purveyor and one of the few remaining meat businesses operating out of the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market in Sunset Park.

“Originally, we were only poultry,” said Steven Solomon, the current owner of King Solomon Foods. “Over the years I added lamb and pork and other meats. I encompassed everything to stay ahead of the game.”

Today, Solomon, who recalls the 1970s when there were around 50 meat packing businesses in Sunset Park, is working on his brand of packaged burger patties called Brooklyn Burger. He has five different flavors, and wants to compete with name brand competitors typically found in supermarkets, such as Bubba Burger.

“Local butchers have dwindled because rents are too high, and young people don’t go to their local butcher anymore,” said Solomon.

Charles L. Solomon, Steven’s grandfather, was a Jewish immigrant from England. Charles left his first job unloading bananas — over 75 years ago — when he heard there were more pennies to be made on the dock moving chickens.

Today Steven carries on the tradition, and his heritage. His operation is one of the few facilities left in the tristate area that sells fresh Kosher meat, veal and lamb, in addition to their regular stock. King Solomon Foods breaks down fresh cattle received from Maryland’s Amish farms as well as mid-western ranches; this is essentially a 24-hour operation, with much of the cutting done in the wee hours of the morning. Orders come in the middle of the night, after restaurants are closed and can see what they need, so the fax and answering machine is busiest when most people are sleeping.

Work days for Steven begin at 3am, so he is known to take his lunch while others are nursing their first cup of morning coffee. Steven’s customers range from many of New York’s finest steakhouses, such as Peter Luger, Wolfgang’s, and Benjamin’s, to top butcher shops such as Ottomanelli Brothers and Lobel’s, and gourmet markets like Grace Balducci and Citarella.

“I’ve never thought of leaving Brooklyn, I’ll always stay,” said Solomon. “If I moved somewhere else, I’d lose all of my regular customers.”

Built in the early 1970s, the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market, which is owned and operated by the Economic Development Corporation, is located on 5600 First Avenue in Sunset Park, and consists of two buildings totaling over 175,000 square feet. It was originally located in the Fort Greene, roughly where the Brooklyn Academy of music is now, but because of the dilapidated and unsanitary state of the buildings at the time, the city moved the facility to the Sunset Park waterfront.

However, the meat industry has since depleted, and perhaps the market was doomed from the start, according to Tony Giordano, a long-time Sunset Park resident and activist.  He was involved in the discussions with the city during the planning of this meat market in the late 1960s.

“The meat market opened, but was a failure — it seems, as usual, the City did not accurately forecast the future.  The meat industry was changing and changing dramatically,” said Giordano. “Instead of hundreds of tiny butcher shops in neighborhoods, supermarkets added their own meat sections and shipped their meat directly from out of state to the store.”

The city and the community in Sunset Park at the time had various concerns about the flow of traffic being disturbed, and a rise of butchers and meat packagers bringing an onslaught of rats and other vermin with them, according to Giordano.

“Local residents, including the head of the Community Board visited meat districts in Boston, and Philadelphia,” said Giordano. “[They] came back feeling that their worst fears were valid — rampant numbers of rats and heavy congestion.”

Around 40 years later, those fears have dissipated. Today, there are 12 meat wholesalers and butchers, including King Solomon, still operating out of the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market, according to the EDC. It’s a shadow of what it once was, but  it’s still considered the place to go for wholesale meats.