Orange Riots at 25th Street and Eighth Avenue, 1871. Following violence the year before uptown on July 12th, (known as Marching Day in Northern Ireland), in 1871 the police barred the Loyal Order of Orange (an Irish Protestant group) from parading again. After complaints were lodged by newspaper, the order itself, and a number of elite businessmen, the police and Tammany Hall relented and allowed the parade. The event began under heavy police and National Guard presence (about 5000 men) at Lamartine Hall, the Orangemen’s headquarters at Eighth Avenue and 29th Street. The parade was met by angry Irish Catholic crowds and the violence escalated to the point that rocks, shoes, and bottles were being thrown; the police and militia were using their clubs and bayonets; and shots were fired into the dense crowds. In all the riot caused the deaths of over 60 civilians – mostly Irish laborers – and three Guardsmen.

Port of New York Authority Building,1949.

(1883-85; Hubert, Pirsson \&Co.)NYC IL; S/NR) The famed Hotel Chelsea was one of the city’s first cooperative apartment buildings, originally named the Chelsea Apartments. Architect and developer Philip Hubert was influenced in bringing the co-op to America by the philosophy of early socialist French thinker Charles Fourier, who imagined a utopian society based on communal associations. Hubert designed the Chelsea with apartments for both co-op members and renters at a variety of income levels, with shared spaces to facilitate community interaction. The massive and imposing 12-story, red-brick building is 25 bays wide, fronted by tiers of delicate iron balconies, and capped by dramatic pyramidal slate roofs, gables, dormers, and chimneys. It has elements of Aesthetic Movement, Queen Anne, and High Victorian Gothic styles, and is notable for its early use of fireproof construction methods such as load-bearing masonry walls and wrought iron beams. When Hubert’s experiment bankrupted in 1905, the building was converted into a luxury hotel visited by prominent guests including Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Sarah Bernhardt, and painter John Sloan. After World War II, as the hotel declined and room prices fell, it attracted Jackson Pollock, Virgil Thomson, Larry Rivers, James Schuyler, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams, and Jack Kerouac. Arthur Miller moved into Room 614 after his divorce from Marilyn Monroe. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Chelsea. From 1957 to 2007, the hotel was an informal artists’ colony benevolently and tolerantly “curated” by manager Stanley Bard. Artwork he accepted in lieu of back rent from struggling artists filled the lobby and main staircase. Bard fashioned and maintained the unique creative dynamic for which the hotel is perhaps most famous, presiding during the 1960’s when Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen wrote some of their greatest songs. Andy Warhol filmed Chelsea Girls here. Bard’s departure was mourned by many residents of the hotel and the Chelsea community. The building continues to house a significant number of permanent tenants.

National Maritime Union of America buildings (Joseph Curran Plaza), ca. 1975. This eye-catching buildings has, at various times been described as looking like a pizza box as well as a cruise ship. Designed by New Orleans architect Albert Lerner, this nautically themed building was one of three structures built for the National Maritime Union in the late 1960s.

London Terrace, 1929. London Terrace was a 19th century development of 80 residential buildings, stretching the full length of 23rd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. The houses, designed to resemble London architecture, were built around 1845 by William Torrey, and demolished in 1929, upon the expiry of their 85-year lease. They were razed shortly thereafter, and the site was redeveloped as London Terrace Towers and London Terrace Gardens by the developer Henry Mandel. The land had been owned by Clement Clarke Moore, from whose “Chelsea” estate gave the neighborhood its name. A professor at the nearby General Theological Seminary (built on land donated by Moore), Moore is best known as the likely author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” first published in 1823.

210 Tenth Avenue (1929 or 1943; altered 1976, Carl Laanes) The Empire Diner is a classic example of the streamlined, stainless-steel, railroad dining car- cum-restaurant that modernized the urban tradition of horse-drawn lunch wagons catering mostly to working men. A diner, or “lunch wagon” (as it was labeled on a 1955 map of the neighborhood), was erected on this site in 1929, but may have been replaced with the present structure in 1943. In 1976, the diner received a makeover designed by Carl Laanes, the former head of MoMA’s graphics department. The Empire quickly became an important social gathering place for Chelsea’s gay community, and was instrumental in the “Chelsea Renaissance” of the late 1970’s and 80’s. Today one can still appreciate the vintage aesthetic of the diner’s shiny metal panels and contrasting black and white enameling.

Pedestrians crossing West 15th Street on the west side of Eighth Avenue; April 18, 1926. Every building on the blockfront behind them, between West 15th and 16th Streets, would be razed in the following years, making way for the city's largest building. The mammoth Port Authority Building (now Google's New York headquarters) was completed in 1932.

County Trust Company Building, March 16, 1933. Built as the home of the Country Trust Company, the 20-story structure with fanciful wedding cake-like setbacks was completed in 1930. The building was designed in a neo-Gothic style by William Whitehall.

414 West 20th Street, 1971.

Chelsea Hotel, ca. 1985. Opened in 1884, as a grand Co-Op Apartment building, the Hotel Chelsea became a long-term hotel for generations of bohemians, including artists, writers, and musicians. Famous musical residents included the Grateful Dead, Nico, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Madonna, and Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan composed Blonde On Blonde in room 211, and later wrote about the experience. Leonard Cohen wrote "Chelsea Hotel #2," a song about hooking up with Janis Joplin in room 222. Most infamously, Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen rented room 100 in 1978 and after several months of epic drug abuse, Spungen was found stabbed to death in their bathroom. Sid Vicious was charged with the crime but died of a heroin overdose before the trial.

Entrance to one of the London Terrace buildings, 1932.

In 1920, English-born poet Elsa Gidlow (1898-1986) moved from Canada to New York City, where she lived for six years. She first wrote for Pearson’s Magazine, a progressive publication that covered literature, politics, and the arts in the first quarter of the 20th century. Its office was located at 57 Fifth Avenue, which (though altered) still stands in Greenwich Village. While today Gidlow is largely associated with the San Francisco Bay Area, she lived in an apartment in this converted Chelsea rowhouse on West 22nd Street in the early 1920s where she likely wrote her groundbreaking book of openly lesbian poetry On a Grey Thread (1923). The book, which she dedicated to her first lesbian love, is considered by literary historians to be the first of its kind to be published in North America. Gidlow lived openly as a lesbian, though she later recalled in her autobiography, Elsa, I Come with My Songs (1986), that meeting other lesbians was difficult in the pre-gay liberation era. Still, in 1924, she met and fell in love with Violet Winifred Leslie Henry-Anderson, who went by the nickname, Tommy. “Being a lesbian, for me as for Tommy, was happy. … We were profoundly sure of our right to be as we were, to love and live in our chosen way, we were happy in it.” - Elsa Gidlow, 1986 The couple left the city in 1926 for the Bay Area, where Gidlow would eventually found Druid Heights, an artistic community in Muir Woods.

253 West 16th Street adjoining the N.E. corner of Eighth Avenue, showing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. November 26, 1927.

This full-block complex, birthplace of the Oreo, was built in several phases over a number of decades. The oldest section was erected in the 1880’s for brewer Thomas McMullen. The rest of the block was developed in the following decades by the newly formed New York Biscuit Company. The baking industry experienced massive consolidation in the 1890’s, culminating in the merger of the New York firm with the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company and the Chicago-based United State Baking Company in 1898. The resulting conglomerate, named the National Biscuit Company, officially established headquarters in its New York City complex in 1906. By 1920, the firm occupied all or parts of five city blocks on Manhattan’s west side. This location was perfectly suited for manufacturing purposes. A railroad spur was routed through the complex in 1904. When the High Line arrived in the 1930’s, the entire Tenth Avenue facade was redesigned to accommodate the elevated tracks. The company changed its name to Nabisco in 1941, and in 1956 divested its Chelsea factories during the deindustrialization of Manhattan

24th Street, south side, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, showing London Terrace homes, ca 1927. London Terrance was an 1845-built housing development modeled on similar structures popular in London at the smae time. The homes were developed by Clement Clarke Moore, the author of 'The Night Before Christmas" when he divided up the land that had once been his family's large estate, 'Chelsea.' Designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, the 36 elegant Greek Revival brownstone townhouses became a very fashionable address for the 19th and early 20th century. The homes had considerable front yards, an oddity for Manhattan. In 1929 the descendants of Clement Clarke Moore leased the property to the Henry Mandel Companies, who demolished the 1845 structures and constructed a massive complex. The 10 central buildings and four corner structures were designed with Tuscan influences by the firm of Farrar & Watmough. The completed buildings were the largest apartment building in the world with 1665 apartments.

Cushman Row, 1971. The row of red brick townhouses that run from 406 to 418 West 20th Street were constructed in 1840 and developed by Don Alonzo Cushman, a wealthy friend of Chelsea's largest land developer Clement Clark Moore. The Greek Revival row constitute some of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood. Each of the homes has a 10-foot deep front yard, recessed doorway, attic windows encircled with decorative wreaths, and wrought-iron handrails. No. 416 (second from right) also has two wrought iron newel posts (the upright posts that support the handrail of a stair banister) topped with pineapples, which are a traditional symbol of hospitality and welcome.

(1849-50, Philo V. Beebe, builder of nos. 437-459) The 12 houses from no. 437-459 were developed by Beverley Robinson (an associate of the Clarke/Moore family) and George F. Talman. Architecturally, these residences mark a transition between the upright, rectilinear Greek Revival and the more curvilinear Italianate styles. Though several of the houses have received updates in later architectural styles—seen especially in the cornices—the row remains unified by its deep front yards, paired stoops, and twin entrances. Immediately to the west stands the smaller, likely somewhat earlier residence at no. 461, which lacks the Landmark status of nos. 437-459. It is a purer example of Greek Revival architecture, with the style’s characteristic flush window lintels and a simple molded cornice from which tiny attic windows peek. The little house would originally have stood on the Hudson Riverbank.

Chelsea Hotel ca. 1947 The Chelsea Hotel, with a cliff of solid red-brick paired with lacy High Victorian cast-iron balconies, was designed by Philip Hubert and his architecture firm, Hubert Pirsson & Company Construction started in 1883. The building opened in 1885, not as The Chelsea Hotel, but as The Chelsea Apartments. Like other residences of the Hubert Home Club, The Chelsea was originally intended to be a cooperative-apartment sold to multiple owners. The cooperative-apartment model appealed to those concerned with both price and prestige as a more permanent home rather than temporary accommodations. Following the success of earlier Hubert Homes ventures, The Chelsea received generous financial backing from capitalists, allowing for its extravagant interior fittings. The rooms sold out immediately upon opening with suites at premium over the original cost. The Chelsea contained 97 suites, each ranging from 3 to 12 rooms, furnished with woodwork of the owner’s choice. In addition to its elevator, the lobby boasted a spiraling staircase with cast-iron railings and mahogany handrails. Residents also received a continuous income from the building’s storefront and tenants on the upper two stories. The attic story in the pavilions originally served as a studio apartment for artists, since its opening. At 180 feet tall, the Chelsea stood twice as tall as what the residential height limit of 1885 allowed, remaining the tallest building in New York

General Theological Seminary ca. 1941 The West Building of the General Theological Seminary was one of an identical pair, the East building having been razed many years ago. It is one of the earliest Gothic Revival buildings in the city and displays a rather naive application of Gothic ornament. Although it is an early forerunner of the countless ivy-clad campuses of the nineteen-twenties, it is, through it simplicity, closer to many of them than were the later, more elaborate Gothic buildings of the eighteen-sixties.

St. Bernard's Roman Catholic Church ca. 1930 St. Bernard’s, at 328-332 West 14th Street and now known as Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. Bernard’s, was originally founded by Irish immigrants during the wave of immigration resulting from the 1840’s famine. This church served relatively middle class “Lace Curtain Irish” (opposed to the lower classes known as “Shanty Irish”), who worked as longshoreman, janitors, mechanics, and teamsters, and owned saloons, stables, blacksmith shops, and the other types of businesses needed to support the industries of the time.

Two carriage houses dating to the late 19th century, 1938. According to photographer Berenice Abbott, the bar was attached to a liquor store on Tenth Avenue. Note the couple at right, in front of no. 461, Mickey Junk Shop (then no. 459).

Tenth Avenue at northeast corner of 24th Street, March 12, 1929. The photograph notes on this image: "Boys on horseback riding ahead of a freight train. Under an old New York statute, never repealed, every surface train must be preceded by one or more horseback riders, to give warning. These riders are known as "Eleventh Avenue cowboys."

The Roxy, ca. 1985. This former garage was transformed into a roller disco at the height of that craze in 1978. Its wooden floors proved excellent for dancing as well and the Roxy became the place where the downtown art world, the punks and the Bronx b-boys all mingled. The Friday night parties in the early 80s were an important showcase for early hip-hop and breakdancing, and Saturday nights hosted the largest weekly gay dance party. Madonna, Blondie, Talking Heads, Run-DMC, Kraftwerk, The Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Whitney Houston, Bette Midler, Cher, and Mariah Carey all performed there as well as legions of dance music DJs.

Greenwich Village, the Meatpacking District, and the East Village were once home to several thriving breweries and distilleries. Over the years, many left the neighborhood due to the demand for residential construction, while others were pushed out of forced to close due to the Temperance Movement. Follow along as we look at some of the mid-19th century breweries and distilleries that once populated these neighborhoods!

Railcar Diner, 1929. The corner of Tenth Avenue and 22nd Street is well known as the location of the Empire Diner. The 1946-built Fodero Dining Car Company structure is rendered in classic black, white, and chrome. A regular diner through the 1970s, the little corner spot has changed owners and levels of fanciness over the last few decades. BUT, the Empire was not the first such railcar diner to occupy this site! Photographs taken in March of 1929 show a dining car festooned with flags, perhaps for a grand opening. The large signage advertised the so-called Perfect Diner No. 2 with the slogan, "This is the World's Finest Dining Car."

Cavanagh's Restaurant ca. 1905 Irish pubs and taverns, some serving restaurant food , were central features of New York City Irish neighborhoods. By the end of the nineteenth century, Irish pubs could be found throughout the City. Irish New Yorker patronized such places because they attracted a clientele of countrymen. Relatively small amounts of capital were required to open a bar and proprietors were perennial employers of foreign-born Irish. Cavanagh's opened in 1876, and became one of the City's most popular Irish eateries. As with many like institutions, its Irishness went beyond its name. Chappell's guide to The Restaurants of New York (1925) noted: "A worthwhile stopping place is Cavanagh's at 258 West 23rd, a well-known restaurant which still keeps its fair share of patronage. It is in this part of town that the ethnologist will be able to discern traces of that rare survival, Irish New York...Cavanagh's is Irish to the core...The touch of Erin creeps in the menu."

249 West 17th Street, ca. 1910. Built in 1902, this six-story structure was the former warehouse for the Siegel-Cooper Dry Goods Store. The company got its start in Chicago in 1887 and expanded to New York City in 1896. At the time of its opening, the storefront was the largest store in the world. The building was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by DeLemos & Cordes, who later went on to design the R. H. Macy's store in Herald Square.

The same, a year and a half later. The church is about to be demolished and replaced by an apartment building, Chelsea Hall. May 30, 1929.

Bayard Rustin Residence at Penn South (Building 7), 312 West 25th Street. Bayard Rustin, one of the most important yet little-known figures of the civil rights movement, lived in an apartment in this Chelsea building complex from 1963 to 1987 (his death). While here, he served as the lead organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and took part in numerous social justice campaigns around the world.

Worker with hand truck crosses West 14th Street amid a jumble of delivery trucks, ca. 1980s. The camera is facing east, from about the point where Washington Street meets West 14th. At right, on the south side of the street, a branded truck is visible at the loading dock of the Imperial Lamb and Veal Co. Today, the building is occupied by retail storefronts for clothing brands.

The Jeanne D’Arc Home, ca. 1912. The Jeanne D’Arc Home, originally founded in 1896 as a refuge for French girls separated from their families, has remained to this day a safe place for women in New York City. Run by the Congregation of Divine Providence, the home accepts women from all religions and cultures – often women from other countries who have come to New York temporarily to study or to work. On any given day, the home can house up 140 women!

National Biscuit Company shipping building on West 15th Street, 1936. The elevated railroad, known as the West Side Line, was abandoned in the mid 1960s and partially demolished. In 2009 the railway was repurposed as an urban park called the High Line, which stretches 1.45 miles though the Meatpacking District in Chelsea. The High Line has proved popular, with nearly five million annual visitors.

Textile High School, 1931. Built in 1930 as a vocational high school for the textile trades, the building (actually two buildings, one each fronting 18th and 19th Streets, and connected in the middle) has had a number of names. Originally Textile High School it was later renamed Straubenmuller Textile High School, after a innovator of the vocational education movement, then Charles Evans Hughes High School, after a NYS Governor, then High School for the Humanities. Today is called Bayard Rustin Educational Complex, which houses a number of small public schools. Some interesting features of this 1930 building, include murals created by W.P.A artists during the 1930s, and a full size swimming pool, which was recently renovated.

401 West 24th Street, April 18, 1941. Constructed in 1904, this six-story brick apartment building was designed by John E. Scharsmith. Best known for his high style buildings including the Beaux-Arts Chatsworth Apartments and the neo-Gothic Swiss House, both on the Upper West Side, he also designed less ornate structures like this one. Writer and gay rights and AIDS activist Vito Russo lived in an apartment in this building from the late 1960s until his death in 1990. He moved into apartment #1 at 401 West 24th Street in Chelsea just before witnessing the June 1969 Stonewall uprising and lived here until his death. The aftermath of the March 1970 police raid at the Snake Pit in Greenwich Village inspired him to become actively involved in the gay rights movement.

Port of New York Authority Building, 1941.

(1930-34; Farrar & Watmough) London Terrace Apartments comprises 14 connected 16- and 20-story buildings occupying the perimeter of an entire city block around two generous courtyards. Developed by Russian-born real estate magnate Henry Mandel, they were built in just two years at a cost of $6 million, included 1,670 units, and boasted an indoor pool, gymnasium, dining room, children’s play area, and roof terrace simulating the deck of an ocean liner, from which residents could see actual passenger ships docking at the Hudson River piers just blocks away. Of main appeal were the courtyards, a garden oasis in the middle of the city. Farrar & Watmough designed the buildings as a unified whole, enlivening the monolithic brick and terra-cotta facades with fanciful gargoyles and motifs from North Italian Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture. “London Terrace” was borrowed from the row of 36 Greek Revival-style brownstone rowhouses demolished to make way for the new development. According to Mandel’s 1942 obituary, London Terrace “was hailed as the largest multifamily building unit in New York” at the time of its completion.

Seventh Avenue, west side, from 20th Street to 21st Street, ca. 1920.

Created by William White, Theodore Dehon, John Henry Hobart, the General Theological Seminary, founded in 1817, is the oldest Episcopal seminary in the United States. Classes began originally at St. Paul's Chapel before briefly moving to New Haven. Clement Clarke Moore, its first professor of biblical languages, donated the land that by 1827 the Seminary occupied. While it was the center of the Oxford Movement, which called for a return to High Anglican Traditions, the seminary began a new age of expansion in the late 19th century. Receiving permission to grant degrees in 1869, the Seminary expanded it physical campus and class size greatly under the leadership of Augustus Hoffman, a benefactor as well as a dean of the seminary. In 1972, the General Theological Seminary was the first American Episcopal Seminary to issue a statement supporting the ordination of women (who were first admitted as full time students in 1971.) The Seminary operates to this day and offers a multitude of religious instruction besides its three year master of divinity program.

Trench work beneath the tracks of the Ninth Avenue El at West 23rd Street; undated photo. Completed in 1873, the 23rd Station was originally the penultimate stop for uptown service on the Ninth Avenue El. The station included two side platforms for local trains, and was bypassed by express service via single central track, added in 1916. The station closed and was permanently dismantled in 1940. In the background, the signature facade piers and front gardens of the original London Terrace complex are visible. The unified full-block development of Greek Revival townhouses stood until 1929, when they were replaced with the high rise apartment complex of the same name.

Old Homestead Steakhouse, ca. 1978. The Old Homestead Steakhouse is one of the longest operating steakhouses in the country. It first opened its doors back in 1868, just after the Civil War, when the meatpacking district was exclusively for butchers. The restaurant, which has now been in the same family for nearly seven decades, is currently owned by brothers Greg and Marc Sherry. Their grandfather Harry Sherry, who started out as the dishwasher, purchased the eatery in the 1940s from its former owner. One key to Old Homestead Steakhouse's longevity is the fact that the establishment, since its start, has been a rather upscale eatery. Unlike chophouses, the steakhouse has always been about serious quality. In fact, the Old Homestead Steakhouse is one of a few restaurants in the United States to serve Kobe Beef, pricing 12-oz portions at $350. Over the years, the restaurant has expanded its tablespace but its menu and atmosphere remain relatively untouched. In fact, it still prides itself in being the first restaurant to send patrons home with a doggy bag (leftovers to-go), because the portions sizes are too big!

Former New York Bank for Savings Interior ARCHITECT: R. H. Robertson DATE: 1896-97 STYLE: Academic Classic The interior of the New York Savings Bank was built in the Academic Classic style popularized by the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893). The interior is intrinsically linked with the exterior, reflecting the exterior volume in the interior space. It is exceptional for its use marble, bronze, stained glass, and plaster. The engaged Corinthian columns and pilasters, coffered ceiling, the drum and dome possess fine ornamental detail.

St. Peter's Episcopal Church This church is an exceptionally fine example of the Gothic Revival. Its central tower was once flanked by openwork side porches. These unique porches were recently removed due to decay, and no vestige of their beauty remains. Some of the interior details and the fine old organ further contribute to the beauty of this church in Chelsea.

Few hotels in New York can match the cultural history of the Chelsea Hotel. From its beginnings as a luxurious apartment building to its later life as temporary accommodations for a host of artists, the Chelsea Hotel has seen been a fixture of New York throughout the years. This story is adapted from the Skyscraper Museum's "Ten & Taller."

24th Street, south side, east from Tenth Avenue. London Terrace, at right, ca. 1927.

Federal style brick house and a row of wood-frame buildings on Ninth Avenue above 21st Street, ca. 1977. The Federal house was completed in 1832 and is today the second-oldest building in the Chelsea Historic District. James N. Wells lived and kept an office there between 1833 and 1839, while a grocery operated in the ground-floor storefront as early as 1835. The neighboring wooden houses were built for wells in the 1850s and 60s. At one point, all four buildings shared a continuous awning. In Edmund Vincent Gillon’s late 1970s photo, the storefront is occupied by L\&S Dairy.

Herring Building, May 4, 1927. Built in 1849 for Silas Clark Herring, the building served as the headquarters of the Herring Lock and Safe Company. The metal "Salamander" safes sold by this company included innovative plaster-of-Paris lining technology, which purported to be fireproof. The neo-Grec, though more generally vernacular building, is five stories tall and is given its odd shape by the meeting of Ninth Avenue and Hudson Street at 14th Street. The northern section of the building, which gives it the shape that earned the moniker of "Little Flatiron" was actually an addition circa 1860. In the late 19th and early 20th century the building was home to variety of food related businesses, including grocers, saloons, restaurants, and at least one butcher. This address has been best known in the late 20th century, as the location of a series of well-known clubs, the most prominent being the basement BDSM Hellfire Club (1971-2002).

My Archive Summer 2019 “In the photo is a co-worker. It is from a series of photos I took between 1977 and 1982, while I was a worker in the market. I had just moved back to NYC in late '77. Getting the job here was just supposed to be a "pit- stop" until I figured out what I wanted to do. I wound up staying 8 years.” —Richard Ovaduke

(1929 or 1943; altered 1976, Carl Laanes) The Empire Diner is a classic example of the streamlined, stainless-steel, railroad dining carcum-restaurant that modernized the urban tradition of horse-drawn lunch wagons catering mostly to working men. A diner, or “lunch wagon” (as it was labeled on a 1955 map of the neighborhood), was erected on this site in 1929, but may have been replaced with the present structure in 1943. In 1976, the diner received a makeover designed by Carl Laanes, the former head of MoMA’s graphics department. The Empire quickly became an important social gathering place for Chelsea’s gay community, and was instrumental in the “Chelsea Renaissance” of the late 1970’s and 80’s. Today one can still appreciate the vintage aesthetic of the diner’s shiny metal panels and contrasting black and white enameling.

149 Eighth Avenue ca. 1938 During the Depression, New York City was home to 135 pawnshops and claimed more than half the nation’s pawnbroking business. Like peddling, pawnbroking catered to the poor and was subject to strict regulation. Abbott was drawn to the attention-grabbing storefronts of pawnbrokers, with their profusion of merchandise and hard-sell advertisements. She exposed several negatives of “Uncle” Rothman’s to capture just the right window-shopping gesture. Rothman’s remained on Eighth Avenue until the 1960s. Heavily remodeled, the building now houses the Food Bar, one of Chelsea’s many chic restaurants.

"Eighth Avenue at S.W. corner of 21st Street., 1929." The light colored brick building seen at left in the original photograph still stands, while the wood-frame structure on corner (which is seemingly being demolished) has been replaced by a red brick building, likely constructed soon thereafter, given its simple Art Deco style.

Church of the Guardian Angel, 1931. The Southern Sicilian Romanesque church is the third Church of the Guardian Angel. The first two, built in 1888 and 1910 were located on West 23rd Street. In 1929, in order to eliminate the dangerous grade-level railway on “Death Avenue,” as Tenth Avenue was then nicknamed, the New York Central Railroad began work on the elevated West Side Line. The proposed right of way for the project included the Church of the Guardian Angel, which was relocated to a new building at Tenth Avenue and West 21st Street. Train traffic continued on Tenth Avenue until the new elevated line, itself feet from the new church’s rear wall, was completed in 1934.

West 15th Footbridge, ca. 1975. The West 15th Footbridge was where the Oreo was invented! It was built in 1930 to connect Nabisco’s office, known as the Chelsea Market today, to its bakery across the street.

New York Biscuit Stables at 445 West 14th Street ca. 2002 This red brick Romanesque Revival building has a long and storied history. According to the designation report, this land was owned by the Astors from 1819 to 1919. It was first owned John J. Astor I, then the Astor Estate until partition in 1878, then John Jacob Astor III, and finally William Waldorf Astor. According to the Daytonian, on June 14, 1892 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported Astor’s intention to build a stable on the site for the New York Biscuit Company. The building was designed by the prominent architect Thomas R. Jackson, who was well known as one of the designers of the rebuilt Trinity Church in 1839. Around the time that Waldorf Astor passed away in 1919, the National Biscuit Company began purchasing properties in the area that it had been leasing from the Astor Estate. 445 West 14th Street was one such property, sold to the National Biscuit Company in 1920. In the 1920s the building was converted to a garage, which housed an innovative fleet of electric cars for the manufacturing giant, as well as a warehouse with offices. The National Biscuit Company also purchased the entire two blocks from 15th to 16th Streets, Ninth to Eleventh Avenues, which would become the largest baking manufacturing complex in the world. Of course 445 West 14th Street didn’t stay in the cookie-making business forever. The National Biscuit Company, which had changed their name to Nabisco in 1941, moved to New Jersey in 1958. 445 West 14th Street was sold in 1959 to the Industry City Realty Co., which used it as a warehouse. It was sold to Ceco Studios, LLC. in 1995. Ceco Studios operates the High Line Stages here, in the adjoining 439 West 14th Street, and in several other buildings in the area. This is one of Manhattan’s largest sound stages.

(1827 and 1836; 1883-1902, Charles Coolidge Haight) The Seminary stands on land donated by Clement Clarke Moore, and originally included just the 1827 East Building, since demolished, and the matching 1836 West Building, which remains. Moore hoped the open campus would double as a value-enhancing town square, like Washington Square and Gramercy Park; it was in fact long called “Chelsea Square.” A seminary graduate, Eugene Augustus Hoffman, was installed as the first dean in 1879. Backed by his personal wealth, he began an ambitious building program known as the “Grand Design.” His architect Haight took inspiration from the Collegiate Gothic campuses of England and their quadrangles as well as the image of a medieval cloister. He built along three sides of the Seminary block’s perimeter, shielding its grounds from Ninth and Tenth Avenues and 21st Street, and preserving much of Moore’s original public-square intent. Left open on the south, Haight’s plan admitted sunlight and allowed the front gardens of the rowhouses across 20th Street—planned via a ten-foot setback laid out by Clement Clark Moore—to contribute their greenery to the leafy oasis of the Seminary. Haight’s design and the rowhouses opposite create a modern, urban version of an encircling cloister. The Seminary’s central, south-facing chapel occupies the traditional place of a medieval cloister church. Its bell tower, like St. Peter’s Church, is modeled on Magdalen Tower at Oxford. Despite unfortunate encroachments on the Seminary’s open space by luxury apartment construction, the block remains uniquely gracious and the heart of Chelsea.

Chelsea Hotel ca. 1936 The eleven-story Hotel Chelsea opened in 1884 as one of the first cooperative apartment buildings in New York City. A list of some of the famous people who have lived there reads like a Who's Who of art, theater and literary circles: Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian Russell, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, John Sloan, Arthur Miller (after his break up with Marilyn Monroe), Tennessee Williams, and Jackson Pollock. The survivors of the Titanic stayed here for a few days, and here Dylan Thomas collapsed after an alcoholic binge from which he never recovered.

New York Savings Bank ARCHITECT: R. H. Robertson DATE: 1896-97 The New York Savings Bank, built in two sections in 1896-97, has a significant place in the architectural and cultural history of New York City. It was designed by the well-known architect R. H. Robertson and is one of his most successful designs because of its scale, choice of materials, and relation to the two major thoroughfares on which it is situated. Its Eighth Avenue portico, the 14th Street elevation of pedimented bay and westernmost three windows, the wall clock, cornice and cresting, the drum and the dome comprise fine ornamental detail. Its materials–granite, marble, bronze and copper–and the workmanship these represent are exceptional.

The National Maritime Union Dormitory and Training Center (1967) on 9th Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets is another of Albert Ledner’s commissions for the National Maritime Union. With over 100 porthole windows and a white, tiled, sloping façade, the dormitory adheres to Ledner’s playful modernist aesthetic in the nearby National Maritime Union Building . In 1987, the National Maritime Union sold the Dormitory and Training Center to Covenant House for use as a runaway shelter and education facility. Over the next two decades, the building experienced a string of bad luck that would tarnish the architectural integrity of the complex: in the late-80s New York Mayor Ed Koch sought to condemn the building and turn it into a prison and then, in the mid-90s a street-level renovation interrupted the sloped façade and added a faux-brownstone city block. Fortunately, adaptive reuse projects have restored its architectural integrity. The Dream Hotel, designed by Handel Architects, added a new Ledner-inspired façade to a portion of the building while retaining the porthole window motif. The Maritime Hotel, a portion of the Dormitory and Training Center rehabilitated in 2003 by Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson, painstakingly recreates elements of the original design and adds details such as nautical teak paneled rooms.

New York Savings Bank moved into the basement of this four-story bank building in 1857. Over the next few decades, the bank prospered and became more visible when it moved into the first-floor space. In 1896 the New York Savings Bank demolished this structure and commissioned a new building on the same site.

New York Savings Bank, ca. 1921. The New York Savings Bank has occupied the northwest corner of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue since the middle of the 19th century. By the turn of the century the bank deemed themselves in need of a new building. Robert Henderson Robertson designed a white marble Roman temple topped by a striking copper dome. The building, which remained a bank through the 1960s, was designated an exterior and interior landmark in 1988. As such each of its ensuing tenants (including a carpet shop, grocery store, and currently CVS) have has to abide by the rules governing interior landmarks (such as not attaching anything to walls or floors).

(1930-32, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon) An embodiment of Chelsea’s working waterfront, the Seaman’s House YMCA was built to serve merchant sailors whose ships were docked along the Hudson. Along with clean rooms, its gymnasium, pool, cafeteria, and chapel were aimed at diverting seamen from the less savory establishments available in the area. Shreve, Lamb & Harmon is most famous for designing the Empire State Building, completed just a year earlier. Their Art Deco YMCA makes a design motif of the organization’s triangular logo and features stylized, nautical-themed, polychrome terra cotta ornament. The building maintains a strong presence at the intersection of 11th Avenue and 20th Streaet, with its chamfered corner and monumental entrance. It operated as a YMCA until 1966. The property was sold to New York State and operated as a correctional facility from 1974-2012.

Grand Opera House, 1937. Originally opened as Pike's Opera House in 1868, the building became the Grand Opera House the next year when it was purchased by James Fisk and Jay Gould. The repertoire was expanded beyond classic opera to include plays and light opera. Fisk's motivation for this was to create opportunity for his girlfriend, actress Josie Mansfield. He put her up in a nearby brownstone and gifted her cash and lavish jewels. The mansion also had a secret tunnel that led to the opera house and the upstairs offices of Fisk's Erie Railway. Fisk became the silent partner in an oil business run by a man named Ned Stokes. Stokes would became Mansfield's other lover and after much drama, including extortion, blackmail, libel lawsuits, and false charges of embezzlement, Stokes murdered Fisk, shooting him in 1872. Fisk lay in state at the opera house. The theatre became a venue for more popular, working class productions, as the changing audience on the west side enjoyed a cheaper and less cultured repertoire. The building became an RKO theatre in 1938 after a renovation by theatre architect Thomas Lamb. Finally closed in preparation for demolition in June of 1960, the building was gutted by a fire in July of the same year.

New York Port Authority building, 1937. 111 Eighth Avenue is an enormous building which takes up the entire block between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and 15th and 16th Streets. It is 2.9 million square feet and was the largest building in the city until 1963. Built in 1932 in the Art Deco style and designed by Lusby Simpson, the mammoth building was original constructed to be multi-use, with the first floor and basement used for the movement of goods by truck under the auspices of the Port Authority, and the upper floors used for manufacturing. With changing transportation and the dwindling of railroad freight in Manhattan, the original trucking functions of the building were largely abandoned by the mid 1940s. The building served as the headquarters of the Port Authority from the 1940s until the WTC opened in 1970. Since 2010 the building has been owned by Google (they paid a reported $1.9 billion), though other companies continue to rent space, including Nike and Bank of New York.

Real estate developer Henry Mandel used high-rise density and collective amenities as a strategy for London Terrace, which stretched between Tenth and Eleventh avenues on W. 23rd Street. To create his behemoth block, Mandel demolished 80 historic row houses and multiplied the stories to 22, with 67 percent land coverage. With this strategy, Mandel housed a comparable density of turn-of-the-century tenements in modern apartments at an average of nearly 931 people per acre. London Terrace became the densest multifamily housing in the city, and garnered rents of $52-$130 per room.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Starve a rat day, an event on 21st Street Chelsea. This was the block I lived on from 1966 or 1967 until 1979. I am in the background wearing the plaid pants." —Amy Peck

My Archive Spring 2019 "Amy Peck, seven years old, and her sister Sally Peck, five years old. I think my father liked the advertisements." — Amy Peck