Where to find home decor items in NYC

Julie Gaines and David Lenovitz share a passion for old restaurant ware. Together they would scour the basements of restaurant suppliers in New York Citys Bowery district for odds and ends or discontinued items.

Eventually their collection so overran their Gramercy Park home that Julie would have to travel to her mothers apartment on the upper East Side to take a shower. Thats when the couple decided it was time to open a store and turn their collecting into commerce.

That was 28 years ago, and their store Fishs Eddy is still going strong at 889 N. Broadway. Its one of a handful of independent retailers sprinkled among the outposts of Americas biggest home furnishings chains in New Yorks Flatiron District.

The area, named for the iconic triangular Flatiron Building bounded by Broadway, East 22nd Street and Fifth Avenue, is a mecca for seekers of high-style home decor. Its blocks are lined with eye-catching window displays of everything from cutting-edge design to the old comforts of home in greater quantity than youll find virtually anywhere else.

Another area of Manhattan to explore decor is the East Village, southeast of the Flatiron District and just as accessible. Its leafier streets and quirky offerings make for more pleasant strolling, but the concentration of stores is lighter, so if hitting a lot of shops in one day is your goal, go to the Flatiron first.

If you arrive by subway, the N and R lines stop at 23rd Street. When you reach the sidewalk, just head south.

One block down, at 935 N. Broadway, youll find a large Restoration Hardware, with plenty of rooms to browse through, furnished like the movie set of a castle with huge chandeliers, aged-leather sofas and distressed-wood everything.

Right next door is Whisk, a local purveyor of kitchen wares with just one sister store (in Brooklyn). I found a $15 blue-glass milk bottle to use for carbonated water and a $12 ceramic version of those pre-Starbucks paper coffee cups the Law & Order cops were always carrying (impractical because it gets very hot, but pretty!).

In the next block youll find Safavieh and Design Within Reach, two retailers familiar to fans of shelter magazines, the first very upscale and the second with more affordable prices.

On the corner of Broadway and E. 19th is Fishs Eddy, the delightful tableware shop born of a couples overflowing apartment.

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Where to find home decor items in NYC