Proctor's 23rd Street Theater ca. 1895 When the church that originally occupied this site was torn down. F.F. Proctor purchased the land and erected his theater. It was here that he began his career as the foremost producer of vaudeville and popular melodramas. Proctor's was the first vaudeville house in New York City to offer "continuous vaudeville," with shows running from 11 in the morning to 11 at night. Advertisements for Proctor's read "After Breakfast, Go to Proctor's, After Proctor's Go To Bed." Located in the Flatiron district, Proctor's made a special appeal to women shoppers, who could catch a show any time during the day. With the coming of movies, the theater began to offer a mix of movies and vaudeville, and then movies alone.

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.

339 West 29th Street (1846-47) NYC HD Lamartine Place Inspired by the terraced houses of England, the north side of this block was developed as a continuous row of Greek Revival residences by William Torrey and Cyrus Mason, who gave it the vanity address Lamartine Place. It soon attracted a respectable group of homeowners including Abby Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons, who purchased no. 339 in 1852. Well-regarded philanthropists and abolitionists, their house became a nexus for anti- slavery activity in pre-Civil War New York, and is the only documented stop on the Underground Railroad in Manhattan. During the Draft Riots of 1863, the Gibbons residence was targeted by a mob that set it afire. Family members fled across the roofs of the adjacent houses. The family later returned to their houses and made repairs. Though somewhat altered since, it is one of the few surviving sites directly associated with the Draft Riots.

(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.

(1845-46, Minard Lafever; additions 1853-54, Lafever, and 1858, Charles Babcock of Richard Upjohn & Son) The Church of the Holy Apostles is another of Chelsea’s historic Episcopal congregations, founded as a mission of Trinity Church. It has long had a socially active congregation and been called “one of the most important meeting places in New York City for organizations of the early post-Stonewall gay rights movement.” Architecturally, it is a remarkably original work that defies precise stylistic categorization. Italianate and Romanesque influences can be seen, but it forges a new statement from them. During the urban renewal era of the mid-twentieth century, much of the area around it was officially labeled a slum and targeted for redevelopment. In the 1950’s, six entire blocks between Eighth and Ninth Avenues were condemned for the private, middle-income Penn South housing project. The developer agreed to save Holy Apostles, along with Manor Community Church and two other churches.

West 28th Street Bathhouse at 407 West 28th Street as seen from Ninth Avenue, 1927. The Public Bathhouse seen in the center of the frame was the second to last such public facility constructed in New York City. Built in 1914, the complex included showers, an indoor swimming pool, public laundry facilities, a gymnasium with an indoor track, a roof garden, and playground. The nearby Irish community used this facility. The pool facility was active until at least the 1960s, and was demolished sometime during the Lindsay administration (1966-1973). This block (between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and 28th and 29th Street) is currently occupied by an annex of the 1933-built Morgan Postal Facility, constructed in 1992.

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.

Eighth avenue, east side, from West 25th (right, not seen) to 26th Streets, showing at No. 312 the Chelsea Theatre. This structure, prior to 1913 was formerly Miner's Theatre which opened here in 1881. It burned in 1903 and was rebuilt in 1904. A photograph of 1910 closely compared, will indicate the present building minus the marquee. June 25, 1928.

314 Eight Avenue, ca. 1910. This structure, originally built in 1881, was rebuilt in 1904 after a fire the proceeding year. In 1913 it closed, to be later reopened as the Chelsea Movie Theatre.

Board of Health Building, Chelsea Center. Entrance, 1937.

Lefcourt Clothing Center, 1929. This 1929 building, commissioned by Garment District developer Abraham E. Lefcourt, was originally designed to house garment shops. The building was erected by the architect firm of Buchman & Kahn at a time when clothing manufacturers were beginning to relocate from Manhattan and into the boroughs. Upon its completion, the building became a magnet that started the relocation of what remained of New York's declining men's clothing industry.

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.

New York Public Library, Muhlenberg Branch, ca. 1912. Completed in 1906, the Muhlenburg Branch is a Carnegie library designed by the same architects of the Main Branch of the NYPL, Carrère and Hastings. The simplified Beaux Arts style building is named for William Augustus Muhlenberg. He was the first rector of the nearby Church of the Holy Communion, and donated many books to the Free Circulating Library (a precursor to the NYPL).

The Church of the Holy Apostles in Chelsea was one of the most important meeting places in New York City for organizations of the early post-Stonewall gay rights movement, particularly from 1969 to 1974. The Episcopalian rector at Holy Apostles, Father Robert Weeks, was instrumental in allowing this to happen, in part because his church was financially strapped and needed the rental income that groups could provide. In the fall of 1967, Weeks had coordinated a gathering of regional Episcopal priests which put forth one of the first religious declarations that homosexuality was morally neutral. Weeks presided over a number of early gay marriages (“services of friendship”), and participated in the protest led by the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) after the police raid on the Snake Pit in March 1970, also praying for the injured Diego Vinales at St. Vincent’s Hospital. One of the earliest LGBT events at Holy Apostles (in the parish hall) was the First New York City All-College Gay Mixer on May 2, 1969, sponsored by Columbia University’s Student Homophile League (formed in 1966). The first LGBT group to meet here regularly, from August 1969 to 1971, was the West Side Discussion Group (WSDG), which held weekly meetings and dances. Initially part of the Mattachine Society of New York, WSDG became a separate organization in 1956, and dropped its affiliation with Mattachine in 1965 after more militant leaders took over Mattachine. GLF held its weekly Sunday meetings here from December 1969 to December 1970, also using Alternate U. for dances and events, and then moving to the Gay Community Center. Gay Youth was founded in 1970 and had its social meetings here until 1972. The first dance for GLF women was held here in June 1970. GAA had its Thursday meetings and its dances here between January 1970 and May 1971, when it moved to the Firehouse. Lesbian Liberation, a committee of GAA, was formed here. In July 1970, Father Weeks turned over Holy Apostles for Sunday afternoon services to the pioneering Church of the Beloved Disciple, “a church for gay people.” Beloved Disciple was founded by Father Robert M. Clement, a former priest in the Polish National Catholic Church and the first openly gay priest to participate in the Christopher Street Liberation Day March in June 1970, and his lover, John Noble. Clement officiated over a same-sex “union ceremony” at Holy Apostles in April 1971. Clement and Noble were married at 33 Wooster Street in July 1971 by Reverend Troy Perry, who had founded the gay Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles in 1968. New York’s City Clerk Howard Katz, incensed at these “illegal marriages” by Clement and Weeks, threatened arrest. GAA held one of its most famous and creative “zaps” at Katz’s office in the Municipal Building – an engagement party for two same-sex couples, complete with wedding cake. In 1972 the Metropolitan Community Church of New York began Sunday evening services at Holy Apostles, led by Howard Wells, who became the first openly gay student at Union Theological Seminary. Then, in 1973, Jacob Gubbay, a Jewish man from India, saw an ad for a gay Passover Seder to be held here, which he volunteered to lead. Less than a year later he was successful in negotiating space for a gay synagogue to host Friday night services at Holy Apostles. The congregation, later officially named Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, held services here until it found a permanent home in Westbeth in July 1975. By 1974, Father Weeks had begun an outreach ministry to the LGBT community, which had not especially participated in Holy Apostle’s own services and activities, and ended the church’s policy of leasing space to LGBT organizations. In 1977 at Holy Apostles, Ellen M. Barrett was ordained as a priest by Bishop Paul Moore. She was one of the first American women to be ordained and was also the very first openly gay Episcopal priest. She had previously served as a co-chairwoman of Daughters of Bilitis, New York, and as a moderator of Gay Students Liberation at NYU, and was a member of Radicalesbians of GLF.

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.

Northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 21st Street, January 25, 1914. The newspaper stand on the corner has a poster which reads: "Why I shot Wm. E. Annis. Capt. Peter C. Hains Jr. USA lays bare for the first time the full facts of the surprising domestic tragedy which reached its climax when he shot Annis dead. In the next Sunday's American." This flashy headline refers to an event that had occurred eight years earlier. Believing that Annis, a magazine publisher, was having an affair with his wife while he was stationed in Manila, the Army captain shot the man six times at a regatta in Little Neck Bay. Hains was found guilty and served only two and a half years of his 8-16 year sentence. Presumably he was telling his story so many years later to cash in on the fame.

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

Board of Health Building, Chelsea Center, 1937. The simple Art Deco building was built in the mid 1930s for the Board of Health. The building, which has functioned as administrative offices and a medical clinic for the BOH and later the Department of Health, is currently (Spring 2017) undergoing a large scale renovation and should open again in late 2017.

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.

329-339 West 30th Street, north side, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. No. 333 was the Rural New Yorker Building which was formerly the old Chelsea Methodist Church. About 1910.

St. Vincent de Paul ca. 1932 French-speaking Catholics from both France and its New World colonies were among the earliest Catholic settlers in New York and were some of the first parishioners of St. Peter's, New York's original parish. The French population tended to assimilate quickly into the larger society; however, bolstered by continued immigration, in 1841, they organized their own parish, St. Vincent de Paul, on Canal Street, in lower Manhattan, which later relocated to West 23rd Street.

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."

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.

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!

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.

(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, east side, from 20th to 19th Streets,1931." Notice the police officer on horseback, and the two different types of ornamental light poles.

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.

300 Ninth Avenue (1845-46, Minard Lafever; additions 1853-54, Lafever, and 1858, Charles Babcock of Richard Upjohn & Son) NYC IL; S/NR Lacking the restrictive covenants imposed by Clement Clarke Moore to the south, the blocks of Chelsea north of 24th Street, called Chelsea Manor, were developed with a mixture of residences, shops, and industry in close proximity. By the mid-19th century, it was a notorious center of vice and threat to vulnerable youth. In 1855, Sunday school advocate R.G. Pardee with help from the South Reformed Dutch Church, set up a mission above a disreputable saloon at Ninth Avenue and 25th Street. In 1866, the mission became an arm of the church, which built Manor Chapel and Mission, now Manor Community Church. Incorporating classrooms and a library, it was completed 1873. Enlarged and given a new façade in 1907, the building’s picturesque Dutch Revival style acknowledges its roots. Two blocks north, the Church of the Holy Apostles is another of Chelsea’s historic Episcopal congregations, founded as a mission of Trinity Church. It has long had a socially active congregation and been called “one of the most important meeting places in New York City for organizations of the early post-Stonewall gay rights movement.” Architecturally, it is a remarkably original work that defies precise stylistic categorization. Italianate and Romanesque influences can be seen, but it forges a new statement from them. During the urban renewal era of the mid-twentieth century, much of the area around it was officially labeled a slum and targeted for redevelopment. In the 1950’s, six entire blocks between Eighth and Ninth Avenues were condemned for the private, middle-income Penn South housing project. The developer agreed to save Holy Apostles, along with Manor Community Church and two other churches.

339 West 29th Street, 1932. No. 339 (seen here covered in ivy) is a 19th-century rowhouse with a powerful abolitionist history and a sad and complicated recent history. Built in 1846-1867, the four-story house was constructed as part of a row for Cyrus Mason. James Gibbons, a banker, and financial writer purchased the home in 1852 and moved in with his wife Abigail Hopper Gibbons and family. The family was ardent abolitionists. The house served not only a station of the Underground Railroad, but the home hosted a school for African American children and a meeting place for black and white abolition leaders. The house was well known for these activities and so was targeted during the Draft Riots in 1863. After black homes and orphanages were burned, the rioters turned to the abolitionists. This house was set aflame on the second night (July 14), and the occupants were only saved from death (by fire or beating) via an escape route that included climbing to the roof, running over the neighboring homes, and climbing out through someone else's house. The home was designated a New York City landmark as part of the Lamartine Place Historic District in 2009. Around that same time, the current owner added a fifth floor (illegally). Over the next decade, the community members and preservationists fought to have the home returned to its original state. Through lawsuits and legal and landmark hearings, the community persisted, and in 2017 when the project came to the Landmarks Commission, the added floor was denied. The height of the building and the cornice would need to be restored. After more than a decade under scaffolding, the front of the building will soon be visible once again.

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.

(1927, Abraham Fisher) This six-story commercial building is notable for its striking façade and unusual name, a reference to the “Traffic Cafeteria” that occupied the lower two stories in the late 1920s. “Traffic” referred to the trucking industry in its nascent years. Cafeteria-style restaurants catering to budget-conscious urbanites became popular in the 1920s. Designed by little-known architect Fisher, the building is a wonder of patterned brickwork and rich, Celtic-inspired terra cotta ornament. Rather than bearing weight, this façade is a “curtain wall” held up floor-by-floor by the building’s concealed steel frame. Fisher’s treatment of the Traffic Building’s façade as a tapestry and use of diagonally-laid brick acknowledge this up-to-date reality. At the same time, traditional elements make it seem anachronistic. It is one of those buildings which, when noticed, rivet and reward.

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.

"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.

(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.

Jews’ Hospital in the City of New York (later Mount Sinai), sketch ca. 1866. The hospital that would become Mount Sinai opened on June 5, 1855, in a townhouse on West 28th Street. As its original name suggests, Jews’ Hospital served the needs of Jewish patients — and employed Jewish doctors — at a time when other hospitals in the city refused service. Non-Jewish patients were admitted in cases of emergency, as were Union soldiers wounded in the Civil War. In 1866, hospital directors adopted the new name Mount Sinai, signaling that patients of all backgrounds were welcome. In the early 1870s, the hospital moved to a new and larger facility at Lexington Avenue and 66th Street.

Church of the Holy Apostles, April 17, 1941. This congregation was established in 1844 as an outreach mission by the downtown Trinity Church to serve immigrants who worked on the Hudson River waterfront. The church building was constructed between 1845 and 1848 and designed by famed 19th century church architect, Minard Lefever. In 1853 the same architect expanded the building to include a larger space around the altar. It was further expanded in 1858 by the firm of the firm of Richard Upjohn & Son, another superstar of 19th century churches. The Episcopal parish has a long history of social activism and advocacy. During the Civil War, the church was possibly a station on the Underground Railroad. In the 1970s the congregation was involved in the founding of an LGBT synagogue, which used the church building for services until they found a permanent home. Since 1982 the church has hosted a soup kitchen.

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.

Church of the Holy Apostles ca. 1941 Extremely deceptive with regard to its age, this church looks as though it might have been built even as late as 1910. Actually, it was erected in the eighteen-forties in a very free, dynamic style using an ingenious array of bull's-eyes, curved pediments, and corbels. An indication that Minard Lafever may have been its architect is found in Plate XCVIII of his book The Architectural Inspector, published in 1858, where we see a small rural church that is quite similar in character.

From the 1870's-90's, approximately 20,000 French immigrants lived in South Village and SoHo area. By the end of the 19th century, most of that colony had relocated to the Chelsea area.

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.

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.

Revillon Frères fur storage warehouse, 1925. Built in 1924 by the firm Cross & Cross, the building was both a storage facility and retail location for Revillon Frères, the French luxury furrier. After the company left the building, the upper cold storage floors were substantially altered, with the diaper-pattern brickwork replaced by rows of windows.

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