A notable, long-time anomaly of the district was the famous Gotham Book Mart, a bookstore, which was located at 41 West 47th Street from 1946 to 2004.

[5][4] The district grew in importance when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands and Belgium, forcing thousands of Orthodox Jews in the diamond business to flee Amsterdam and Antwerp and settle in New York City.

[7] The area is one of the global hubs of the diamond business,[citation needed] as well as the premier center for jewelry shopping in the city.

Commission based hawkers are a common sight and they usually solicit business for stores located on the street level.

[15] A January 2020 article in Smithsonian magazine described the Diamond District as follows:[4] "Visit 47th Street today, and the stylish pedestrians of Fifth and Sixth Avenues vanish.

In their place are elderly, ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing black overcoats and fedoras; south and central Asians with traditional karakul hats; and gaggles of merchants shouting in languages from across the world ... Forty-seventh Street is, in fact, a thick network of middlemen, with diamantaires buying and selling large caches of diamonds much like stock brokers..."[4]The New York City Subway's 47th–50th Streets – Rockefeller Center station on the IND Sixth Avenue Line offers service on the B, ​D, ​F, , and ​M services.