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and 1951, the West Side Elevated Highway, which ran along the west side waterfront from the Battery to 72nd Street, was out of date and largely obsolete by the time it was completed.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.

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.

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.

(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.

Starrett-Lehigh Building ARCHITECT: Cory & Cory; Yasuo Matsui DATE: 1930-31 STYLE: Industrial, Modernism The Starrett-Lehigh Building is an enormous warehouse building that occupies the entire block bounded by West 26th and 27th Streets and 11th and 12th Avenues. A cooperative venture of the Starrett Investing Corporation and the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and built by Starrett Brothers & Eken, the structure served originally as a freight terminal for the railroad with rental manufacturing and warehouse space above. A structurally complex feat of engineering with an innovative interior arrangement, the Starrett-Lehigh Building is also notable for its exterior design of horizontal ribbon windows alternating with brick and concrete spandrels. Considered in the forefront of modern architecture in New York City at the beginning of the 1930s, the building combined the practical functionalism of American industrial architecture with the influence of the horizontal aesthetic of European Modernism of the 1920s. Today it continues to provide rental office, manufacturing, and warehouse space.

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.

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.

27th Street, Eleventh to 13th Avenues (Before reconstruction), date unknown.

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

414 West 20th Street, 1971.

Baltimore and Ohio Freight Station and Storage Warehouses, March 3, 1929. The Baltimore and Ohio Freight Yard, which occupied the land south of its massive building, dates in the 1890s. The 10-story warehouse building was constructed in 1912-1914.

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.

Starrett-Lehigh Building. Considered one of New York City's oldest 'modern' buildings, Starrett-Leigh was constructed in 1930-1931 as a joint venture between the Starrett real-estate company and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It was a massive (26 million cubic feet of space) freight terminal, warehouse, and office building constructed over the Lehigh Valley Railroad's active freight yards. Some of the buildings more unique features include nearly floor to ceiling windows, 30-foot deep elevators (for the movement of whole trucks), and rounded corners and deep setbacks. It was one of only a few buildings by a non-major architect featured in the genre-defining 1932 "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" show of the Museum of Modern Art. Architectural critic Lewis Mumford said in 1931: "the contrast between the long, continuous red-brick bands and the green-framed windows, with sapphire reflections or depths, is as sound a use of color as one can see about the city."

Man and boy at fire hydrant, around 28th Street and 11th Avenue, with Empire State Building (1931) visible in background

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.

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.

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.

Starrett-Lehigh Building ca. 1990 The Starrett-Lehigh Building on Manhattan's west-side waterfront stretches a full block between 26th and 27 th streets was the first Modern building of its scale in New York City. Designed by Architects Cory & Cory, in association with Yasuo Matsui and engineers Purdy & Henderson, the Starrett-Lehigh features long, horizontal layers punctuated by continuous glass windows and bands of red brick and concrete spandrels. Each floor was rented to a different tenant, including printers, doll makers, and clothing manufacturers with the promise of easy access to transportation. Along with its connection to the waterfront and a railway hub on the ground floor, the building allowed trucks to drive into the building on W. 27th Street and into elevators located in the central core, deliver their goods upstairs, then exit onto W. 26th Street.

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.

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."

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.

Starrett-Lehigh Building, July 14, 1936. The Starrett-Lehigh Building was a much heralded modernist experiment in industrial architecture. Completed in 1931, this massive factory-warehouse offered a novel solution to freight distribution: with tracks leading directly from the piers into the building, freight cars could be moved in 30-foot elevators to truck pits on upper floors. The building was also a dramatic example of International Style architecture, with horizontal bands of windows and cantilevered concrete floors sweeping around the perimeter of a huge city block. Abbott photographed the Starrett-Lehigh Building twice. In a street-level view of the northeast corner, she left uncorrected the converging perspective created by her wide-angle lens, thus exaggerating the building’s bulk and likening it to the prow of a ship. Two years later, she photographed the entire building from a pier on the far side of the new West Side Express Highway. With the decline of the waterfront, this innovative building never fulfilled its promise. A protected landmark, it is 30 percent vacant.

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.'"

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.

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.

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

Terminal Stores, date unknown. The fortress-like Terminal Stores, which originally occupied the entire city block from 11th to 12th Avenues between 27th and 28th Streets, was completed in 1891. This waterfront area was once teeming with large such warehouses that utilized the nearby cross-Hudson railroad-car ferries and freight lines.The facility was not meant for long term storage, but for the quick movement of goods. The complex of building was designed by George B. Mallory, an engineer and naval architect. The large opening, seen at right, was deigned for the movement of the twin rail lines that traveled through the buildings from the docks to surface-level freight at Eleventh Avenue. In 1910-1912, a few of the mid block structures were replaced with taller buildings. Following the movement of the street-level rail from Tenth and Eleventh Avenue in the late 1920s, the importance of these warehouses diminished as their direct connection to the freight lines had disappeared. Sine the late 20th century the one of the buildings has been occupied by a mini storage company. Today, other tenants include architectural firms, the driving service Uber, and event and art showrooms.

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.

10th Avenue southwest corner and 29th Street, 1940. The lot that once included this Esso gas station remains empty today despite acquiring a new glassy neighbor in 2015. The West Side Line, a spur of the New York Central Railroad can be seen in the distance. Today this railroad infrastructure is the High Line.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

(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.

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