Southeast corner of Eleventh Avenue and 24th Street, April 3, 1937. According to the photographer's notes, this dining car restaurant at the south east corner replaced a tenement building previously at 200 Eleventh Avenue. Upon closer inspection, the dining car is a Munson Diner. The Zelin family which owned Munson Dinner had four locations on Eleventh Avenue by 1959. Munson Diner's best known and longest running location was at Eleventh Avenue and 49th Street. That location featured a 1945 Streamline Moderne dining car and attached kitchen facility. It survived in Hell's Kitchen until 2004. Moved upstate to Liberty, New York in the Catskills, it reopened in 2007, but unfortunately after a series of unsuccessful operators and a name change, the diner has been closed since 2016. Today the pictured plot at 24th and Eleventh is home to a new apartment building that features the first car elevator in New York City, which allows residents to drive their vehicles into the elevator and lift them into "en-suite sky garages."

West Side Elevated Highway, looking at West 23rd (left of building with clock) and West 22nd Street (straight ahead), ca. 1975 Constructed between 1929 and 1951, the West Side Elevated Highway, which ran along the west side waterfront from the Battery to 72nd Street, was out of date and largely obsolete by the time it was completed. Constructed, along with the elevated rail line, over 11th Avenue, the new infrastructure was a means to make this area safer. (Due to the dangers of trains and congestion at street level, 11th Avenue had long been called Death Avenue.) The highway, as built, was too too narrow for trucks, the sharp turns on the exit and entrance ramps were dangerous, and the chemicals used for de-icing in the winter quickly deteriorated the structure. The soundness of the structure continued to worsen through the 1960s and 1970s. In 1973 a section near 14th Street collapsed and a car and truck fell through. The highway south of 46th street was closed after not being found structurally sound. The southernmost section remained standing, though in very bad shape, through the late 1980s, when it was replaced with a grade-level six-to-eight lane boulevard. The section from 57th to 72nd Street was rehabilitated and connects to the Henry Hudson Parkway north of 72nd Street.

Horses in front of 532-522 West 24th Street, ca. 1915. The signage on the building notes its services as horse shoeing, hay and oats. This facility was likely frequented by the "Eleven Avenue Cowboys," who rode ahead of surface freight train traffic for safety.

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.

The moment the gangway connected an early-mid 29th century ocean liner to a West Side pier, passengers would disembark into a warehouse-like structure. Simultaneously, baggage would be unloaded from the ship, and taken to the Customs examination area by a fleet of baggage handlers and stevedores. A passenger’s luggage would be deposited beneath the first letter of their last name for them to collect.

414 West 20th Street, 1971.

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.

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.

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.

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."

High pressure water system trench on West 23rd Street, near Eleventh Avenue; undated photo. At left, a trolley approaches the West 23rd Street Ferry (out of view in the distance), from which point riders could connect to the Erie and Pennsylvania railroad companies via service to Jersey City. At right, across Eleventh Avenue, the large multi-story structure is the 23rd Street depot of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, which in 1899 operated over 230 miles of mechanical and horse-powered streetcar lines — including service to the 23rd Street ferry. At far right is the Hollings Hotel, later the Terminal Hotel, at No. 182 Eleventh Avenue. John Hollings, the proprietor, sold the hotel and moved to New Jersey after Prohibition, but his name lived on in a slice of New York culinary history documented by Joseph Mitchell, in "All You Can Hold for Five Bucks", a report in the April 15, 1939 issue of The New Yorker: By the 1930s, the basement of the Terminal Hotel had gained a reputation as one of the West Side's foremost venues for bawdy, gentlemen-only beefsteak dinners. Beefsteak dinners like those held at the Hollings Beefsteak Keller, as the basement "dungeon" was known, were celebrations of meat and beer, enjoyed to excess. At a proper beefsteak, men — from politicians to tradesmen and police officers — would gorge themselves thick sliced servings of steak with their hands until they could pack away no more. Mitchell turned to East Side butcher and beefsteak chef William Wertheimer to characterize the scene: "'The foundation of a good beefsteak is an overflowing amount of meat and beer. The tickets usually cost five bucks, and the rule is ‘All you can hold for five bucks.’ If you’re able to hold a little more when you start home, you haven’t been to a beefsteak, you’ve been to a banquet that they called a beefsteak.'"

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.

(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.

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.

Pipes and steel fixtures for the high-pressure system stacked near West Side piers; undated photo. This staging area was located near the northern end of the contemporary Chelsea Piers complex. Those piers, which were later constructed to accommodate the large ocean liners of the early 1900s, had yet to be constructed. In the distance at left is Pier 62, then operated by the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

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.

(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.

A high-pressure pumping system was installed in 1909 to provide water for the NYFD from City Hall to 25th Street.

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.

R.C. Williams & Co. Warehouse, 1937. Built as the headquarters for a wholesale grocery company, the 10-story concrete R.C Williams & Co. Warehouse was well positioned near the elevated west side freight line (today, the High Line). Designed by concrete guru Cass Gilbert and completed in 1927, the building was a part of the company's export division, which shipped products all over the world. The interior of the building was designed for "maximum efficiency and the seamless flow of goods," according to the LPC designation report for the West Chelsea Historic District, in which the building is located. R.C Williams moved their warehouse to the Bronx in 1953. The building was used as a manufacturing space though the second half of the 20th century and in 1993 became a location for ABC prop and scenery storage.

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.

As steamship travel become faster and safer, tourism from New York and the old world became increasingly fashionable for those that could afford it. In this edition of our Interior Life series, we're swapping buildings for boats, examining three of the luxurious ocean liners that ferried passengers across the Atlantic: the S.S. Paris, the S.S. Ile De France, and the S.S. Normandie. All built by the French Line, these three ships made Compagnie Générale Transatlantique famous and marked a new age in trans-oceanic travel.

(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.

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.