In 1750, when Capt. Thomas Clarke bought a tract of farmland for his retirement, he named it Chelsea after the Chelsea Royal Hospital, an old soldiers’ home in London. Captain Clarke’s grandson, Clement Clarke Moore developed Chelsea as a garden suburb. Moore, known as Chelsea’s founding father, incorporated guidelines for building that are still in effect today.

Today, Chelsea is known as that small town community where everybody knows your name. The resident population is made up of artists, a sizable gay community as well as some government subsidized housing tenants. In this small and mixed community atmosphere everyone feels safe and comfortable to do whatever they please. Hence, Chelsea has many diverse entertainment spots, ranging from traditional bars, and restaurants to some more avant garde nightclubs and pubs.

The buildings in Chelsea range from lofts to 19th century brownstones to townhouses converted into multiple apartment units to large apartment buildings. Loft buildings are the primary residences, for photographers, artists and designers. They have been known to sell for as much as $530,000 and up, Chelsea is only slightly less expensive now than the West Village.

Located between Midtown and the West Village, this neighborhood offers convenience, comfort and safety. Besides, shopping, movie theaters and local bazaars on weekends Chelsea 9 different subway lines that pass through it, making it one of the most accessible places in the city. Chelsea is a stereotype New York City area, full of surprises and delights and chaotically marred by decades of little planning and changing patterns of development.

Its lack of cohesiveness, however, has not obliterated all its charm and in the late 1990’s it was undergoing a renaissance with an influx of art galleries, seeking less expensive space than was available in SoHo, and a major new waterfront recreational facility, Chelsea Piers, that was re-introducing many New Yorkers to the area.

It also benefited greatly from the burgeoning popularity of the Flatiron District just to the east that spilled over into Chelsea.

Its numerous major landmarks such as the great former department store buildings along Ladies’ Mile centered on the Avenue of the Americas south of 23rd Street, the Chelsea Hotel and London Terrace apartment complex on West 23rd Street and the Episcopal General Theological Seminary block on 21st Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and the Joyce Theater on Eighth Avenue at 18th Street, and the imposing Starrett-Lehigh industrial building on West 27th Street have been matched by the area’s many interesting restaurants, pleasant townhouses, converted loft buildings and new residential construction that began in the 1980’s. South of Penn Station, Madison Square Garden, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the stores of Herald Square and the Garment Center and north of Greenwich Village, Chelsea is close to the Midtown office district but also not far from the many attractions of downtown.

Chelsea was the name given to his estate by Captain Thomas Clarke in 1750. It stretched from 19th to 28th Streets from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River. Clement Clarke Moore, his grandson, who is best known for his poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas," divided the estate into lots around 1830.

The opening of the Hudson River Railroad along 11th Avenue in 1851, however, began to change the area significantly as warehouses, breweries and slaughterhouses were erected in its wake along the western edge of the area by its extensive piers along the river.

Twenty years later, the city’s first Elevated line opened along Ninth Avenue at about the same time that a theater district began to flourish on West 23rd Street where the Grand Opera House was erected on the northeast corner at Eighth Avenue. The opera house also served as the headquarters of the Erie Railroad that was owned by financier Jim Fisk and was the scene of his funeral after he was shot by Edward S. Stokes who was also involved with Fisk’s mistress, Josie Mansfield. The opera house, which served as a RKO movie theater in its waning years, was demolished in 1960 to make way for the 2,820-unit Penn Station South housing complex that was developed by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, whose worker toiled nearby in the Garment District to the north. In 1862, Edith Wharton, who would become the author of such books as "The Age of Innocence", was born in a brownstone at 14 West 23rd Street that was converted into a store in 1882 by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the architect who would later design the Plaza Hotel.

In the 1870’s and 1880’s, the area was convenient to the then very fashionable Gramercy Park and Madison Square areas, but a "vice" district also emerged in the 20’s and 30’s along the Avenue of the Americas, which was then, of course, Sixth Avenue. Although the theater district would soon move north to the Times Square area, Chelsea became something of a "Bohemia" for many artists, although by the turn of the century Greenwich Village would assume that title.

In the 1870’s, Sixth Avenue became the city’s most fashionable shopping district and fortunately many of the great buildings erected for the famous stores still survive and many were restored for other commercial uses in the 1980’s. Among the best are 655-671 Avenue of the Americas between 20th and 21st Streets that was built in 1875 as the Hugh O’Neill Dry Goods Store and was designed with a lovely and quite formal cast-iron facade by Mortimer C. Merritt. Another major store was the Siegel-Cooper Dry Goods Store at 616-632 Avenue of the Americas, built in 1896 and designed by DeLemos & Cordes, which had a center court with a fountain by Daniel Chester French that was a popular rendez-vous and also served as a military hospital during World War I. This emporium, which advertised itself as "The Big Store - A City in Itself," was the grandest of six major stores along this stretch. The same architects also designed the former Adams Dry Goods Store at 675-691 Avenue of the Americas in 1900.

One of the city’s first cooperative apartment buildings and Chelsea’s most famous landmark was the Chelsea at 222 West 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, a 12-story, red-brick, Victorian Gothic-style structure with wonderful balconies that were made by J. B. and J. M. Cornell. It was built in 1884 and designed by Hubert, Pirsson & Co. Among its many illustrious restaurants over the years have been writers Mark Twain, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Brendan Behan, artists John Sloan and Jackson Pollack, composer Virgil Thompson and actress Sarah Bernhardt. Andy Warhol’s 1966 movie, "The Chelsea Girls", was shot in the building, which was converted to a hotel.

Not long after the turn of the century, movies began to be made in the area’s old lofts and theaters. In 1930, the 1,670-unit residential complex known as London Terrace opened on the block bounded by 23rd and 24th Streets and Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Designed by Farrar & Watmaugh, the attractive red-brick buildings formed two high-rise slabs between a midblock garden and had many amenities included a large swimming pool and a rooftop recreational area overlooking the Hudson River that was decorated in oceanliner style. When it first opened, the attractive complex had doormen dressed as London bobbies. The buildings replaced a very attractive row of four-story houses set back in large front yards across from the 19th Century Clarke mansion.

In 1931, the Starrett-Lehigh Building was erected on the large block bounded by 26th and 27th Streets between 11th and 12th Avenues. Designed by Russell G. and Walter M. Cory and Yasuo Matsui, the sprawling, 19-story industrial building is widely considered a modern landmark for its bands of windows, truck elevators and curved corners.

The white-tile, slanting facade with portholes of the National Maritime Union Building at 346 West 17th Street is another unusual building. It was built in 1966 and designed by Albert C. Ledner & Associates.

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion at 49 West 20th Street on the corner of the Avenue of the Americas is a modest church structure designed by Richard Upjohn in 1879 that was converted to the Limelight Disco, which was closed for a while in the 1990’s because of alleged drug activity. The conversion of the interior was quite interesting and effective. The area’s best conversion was the Joyce Theater at 175 Eighth Avenue. The Art Deco-style conversion by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer & Associates in 1982 from the 1942 Elgin movie theater created the city’s nicest small revenue for dance and the theater became the home of several of the city’s most important modern dance companies and helped spark a renaissance along Eighth Avenue in this area with many new attractive restaurants.

Not too far away from the Joyce is the area’s very popular Empire Diner at 210 Tenth Avenue that was built in 1943 and altered very nicely in 1976.

In 1934, the 11th Avenue railroad, which was used for freight and was the scene of so many accidents that the avenue was known for a while as Death Avenue and required a "cowboy" to ride on horseback with a red flag ahead of every train, was replaced by an elevated line west of Tenth Avenue. The Ninth Avenue Elevated line was torn down just before World War II.

One of the major institutions in the area is the Fashion Institute of Technology between 26th and 28th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues, which services the nearby Garment Center to the north. For many decades, Eighth Avenue in the high 20’s had numerous Middle East and Greek restaurants and nightclubs. Many townhouses in the area were converted into rooming houses, but some are being reconverted as are numerous loft buildings and while most blocks are uneven architecturally they usually have at least an interesting building or two.

Thirty-Second Street for many years was filled with photography stores and in the late 1990’s it became a more visible consumer electronics center as many stores resorted to very bright and colorful signs that made it look at night like a bit of Tokyo.

The dominant landmark is the Empire State Building, which is just to the north of the district, which could use some more parks.