Manhattan Neighborhood Information:  Chelsea


Boundaries: Roughly from 39th to 15th Streets, between the Hudson River and Fifth Avenue.

Borders: Hell's Kitchen, Midtown West, and the West Village

Subway stops: The A, C, E line to 34th or 23rd Streets; the 1, 2, 3, 9 line to 34th, 28th, or 23rd Streets; the B, D, F, N, Q, R, V, or W train to 34th Street; or the F or V train to 28th Street.

Chelsea takes its name from the Federal-style house which was the birthplace of Clement Clarke Moore, who is credited with "A Visit From St. Nicholas," which he may have authored, more often than with the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons printed in the United States, which he certainly 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 Clarke 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.

Until recent years, Chelsea was known as the heart of the Garment and Flower districts. Today, Chelsea real estate is one of the city's most prestigious zip codes. Chelsea, Manhattan today is considered a very fashionable place to live and the real estate (rentals and sales) is in high demand.

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