Thirty minutes early for a meeting Friday, I decided to high tail it over to Chelsea Market to take a few quick early morning photos.

I think Chelsea Market has got to be one of the most visually appealing shopping, eating and work complexes in the city. Investor Irwin Cohen and his architects, Vendeberg Architects, did a masterful job of retaining the structure of the old biscuit companies that occupied the building from the 1890s up until the 1950s.

The shop keepers on the ground floor have done an exceptional job of maintaining a certain homemade, old-style look-and-feel to their signage and the way they display their goods in their shop windows. Of course there’s plenty of new mixed in with what looks like old.

Exposed brick, pipes and old signboards throughout the market give the space an authentic industrial feel. There’s also supposed to be an original train shed someplace in the market. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. Then again, I don’t know what a train shed is supposed to look like.

It’s a good thing I already had breakfast. Or I’d definitely be all over Sponge Bob and his cute little Muppet cupcake friends on the shelf above. They all seem to be saying, “Eat me.”

These curtains of light strands remind me of the hippy-dippy beads Anthony used to have hanging in the kitchen doorway of our East Village apartment. They were quite festive. I wonder how many strands of lights it took to do this?

Mary Maru