Chelsea, Manhattan

Chelsea takes its name from the Federal house, the birthplace of Clement Clarke Moore, who is credited with "A Visit From St. Nicholas" more often than with the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons printed in the United States, which he also authored. "Chelsea" stood surrounded by its gardens on a full block between 9th and 10th Avenues south of 23rd Street until it was replaced by high quality row houses in the mid-19th century. The former rural charm of the neighborhood was tarnished by the freight railroad right-of-way of the Hudson River Railroad, which laid its tracks up 10th and 11th Avenues in 1847 and separated Chelsea from the Hudson River waterfront. Clement Moore gave the land of his apple orchard for the General Theological Seminary, which built its brownstone Gothic tree-shaded campus south of "Chelsea."

By 1900, the neighborhood was solidly Irish and housed the longshoremen who unloaded freighters at warehouse piers that lined the waterfront and the truck terminals integrated with the raised freight railroad spur. The film On the Waterfront (1954) recreates this tough world, dramatized in Richard Rodgers' jazz ballet "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" (1936).

Chelsea was an early center for the motion picture industry before World War I. Some of Mary Pickford's first pictures were made on the top floors of an armory building on West 26th Street.

London Terrace was one of the world's largest apartment blocks when it opened in 1930, with a swimming pool, solarium, gymnasium, and doormen dressed as London bobbies.

Traditionally Chelsea was bounded by Eighth Avenue, but now it runs as far east as Broadway. The neighborhood is primarily residential with a mix of tenements, apartment blocks and rehabilitated warehousing, and its many businesses reflect that: restaurants and clothing stores are plentiful. Chelsea has a large gay population. Chelsea is an increasingly significant art gallery district.

Chelsea was briefly at the center of a media circus when Sid Vicious (a member of the rock group the Sex Pistols) was charged with the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen on October 12, 1978, while staying in the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel also owes some of its fame to Leonard Cohen, who wrote a song of the same name in 1967. Andy Warhol filmed Chelsea Girls in the hotel and Jon Bon Jovi shot the video for his song "Midnight in Chelsea", from his 1997 solo project Destination Anywhere, there.

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