A historical dive into Google's soon-to-be New York property, Chelsea Market

The building formerly housed a National Biscuit Company factory.

The company, also known as Nabisco, invented the Oreo at the factor in 1912 and produced the famous cookie there.

Now the Chelsea neighborhood location houses a food hall, shopping mall, and corporate offices.

A brass plaque commemorates the building's former tenant.

Nabisco, the product of an 1898 merger of three baked-goods industry rivals, produced half of the country's cookies soon after it moved into this property. It grew quickly after it became a unified company. It added one structure after another to the site to create what will reportedly soon be Google's new New York City digs.

The plaque is mounted on the building's 9th Avenue entrance between 15th and 16th street. A display case near the plaque showcases Nabisco memorabilia.

Nabisco moved out of the property in 1959.

Nabisco left for the suburbs, in part because the growing reliance on trucking to transport goods led to a decrease in railway traffic on the railroad that ran to the factory, making it harder for the company to transport its goods. Also, Nabisco needed more room, both to expand and to accommodate the latest in baked-goods technology.

After it left the site, what remained was a collection of 19 abandoned structures filling up an area a block long and a block wide.

Among the things left behind: a bridge that connected the factory to Nabisco's former offices.

Nabisco's former office building, located at 85 Tenth Avenue, is now separately owned.

For decades, the buildings were barely used.

The tenants that did come through hardly touched the old factory decor. This Nabisco mural, for example, can still be seen today.

Outside the building's walls, the surrounding neighborhood became more and more deserted.

Investor Irwin B. Cohen bought the property in 1990, then developed and opened Chelsea Market seven years later.

Cohen purchased the foreclosed mortgage debt on the building in 1990 for $10 million. He then developed the property on his own.

Over the years, three other investors bought stakes in the property — Angelo Gordon & Co. and Belvedere Capital Real Estate Partners in 1999 and Jamestown Properties in 2003. In 2011, Jamestown bought out all of the partners, including Cohen, to take full ownership of the property.

In 2009, the abandoned railroad track that formerly served the Nabisco factory re-opened as a public park.

The railroad stopped running trains on the tracks soon after Nabisco left the area. The park, dubbed the High Line, connects the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with the Meatpacking District, about 1.5 miles north, and runs along the west side of Chelsea Market.

Today, Chelsea Market is home to shops, restaurants, and corporate offices.

The market houses some 58 shops and restaurants. Among the companies with offices there are Major League Baseball, the Food Network, Oxygen Network, and — of course — Google. The tech giant already leased 400,000 square feet of the property before its decision to purchase all 1.2 million square feet of it.

Elevators featuring customized designs ferry corporate employees to their offices in the market's upper floors.

The restaurants and shops take up the ground floor.

It isn't clear what Google will do with the property, but hopefully it will maintain Chelsea Market's look and charm.

The market's is something New Yorkers and tourists have both grown to love.