Another shop in Limelight Marketplace is Soapology.

If you look close at the picture, you will see the church historic stain-glass windows.

Besides the smell of the gourmet food shops in Limelight, one can also smell Soapology aroma.

Like their outlet in SoHo, this store has a sink so that each customer who enters can try Soapology products.

Each product is made organically and have rich vitamins. Your skin literally feels much better after you test the products.

You can also mix the products and make your own ‘soap’.

The scrub is the best. The brown sugar one. It makes you feel like you are on the beach taking a bath! It’s very relaxing.

Visit Soapology at http://soapologynyc.com/?SID=1ecbcbfa9aa8b8805fd218af50b3fb42

Another shop set up in Limelight Marketplace is Hanani.  I always saw their selling post in Union Square but never stopped by to really look at the pretty jewelry. Today the sales lady started telling me a little bit about the artist, Andrzej Bialuski, and the art.

Hanami is real flower jewelry. It’s made of real flowers. She said that he uses orchids.

If you see the jewelry in person you would want to buy all of it. Each on is made differently because no two flowers are exactly alike.  Each on has its own colors. It feels like plastic melted around real flowers.

The sales person told me that Bialuski shop is in Brooklyn. I would love to check it out.

The manikin on top of It’s Sugar. One of the first and fun things you see when you walk into the Limelight Marketplace.

This is one of the shops inside Limelight Marketplace. It brights the entire place up with it’s bright hues.

Today a friend and I were walking on the Avenue of the Americas looking for purple gloves.

We were going into almost every store we saw.

When we passed by a church like building, we decided that we would go in just to see what was going on.

A kind door-man open the doors for us and said Welcome to Limelight.

Well, it turned out to be a huge and fun market place. It looks just like an old church from the outside but inside is a mall. There are three tiers and each floor has something for the potential buyers to look forward too.

I spoke to some of the employees about the building and quite a few knew the history of it; however, not anyone I spoke to knew the in-depth history. Their stories usually went like this:

It was first a church, then a bar (one person said a gay bar), a trunk show and now it’s a market place.

Apparently, all that is true. It was an Episcopal Church (Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion) built around the 19th Century. In the 70’s it was sold and in the 80’s it became The Limelight, a social club. This year May 7th, 2010 it opened as Limelight Marketplace.

Each shop is unique and there is a fresh aroma of food through out the entire place; there are gourmet food shops in there.

It has an union square feel. It’s almost similar to the markets in Union Square. It’s just in a very unique building.  In addition, the crowd is fairly small.

If you want to check it out, the address is

Limelight Marketplace, 656 Ave of the Americas

Or visit  http://shoplimelightmarketplace.com/about.html