Chelsea (Manhattan)
Chelsea is a part of the larger borough of Manhattan in New York City ; it is on Manhattan's west side.
Geography and history
Chelsea is south of Hell's Kitchen and the Garment District and north-northeast of the Meatpacking District , which is centered on West 14th Street . Traditionally, the area was bounded by Eighth Avenue to the east, but since 1883, with the construction of a new block of flats that would later become the Chelsea Hotel , areas east of Seventh Avenue have been included in Chelsea and today houses and streets become Chelsea Broadway to the east of Chelsea.
The area consists mainly of a mixture of apartment blocks and converted warehouses (lofts). This is also reflected in its commercial focus: restaurants and clothing stores predominate here. As the largest gay and lesbian neighborhood in New York City, Chelsea has a high proportion of gay people who are stereotyped that they are body-formed " Chelsea boys ". In recent years, Chelsea has become a hub of the New York art scene as a growing number of SoHo galleries have moved to Chelsea; among the galleries are those of Larry Gagosian , Leo König and David Zwirner. There are several museums including the Chelsea Art Museum . The 1995 redesigned Chelsea Piers and Hudson River Park have also made the area more attractive.
The name of the district comes from the former rural estate "Chelsea", where Clement Clarke Moore was born. In the middle of the 19th century, this property was replaced by high-priced row houses as the city of New York expanded. The formerly rural charm had to give way to the routing of the Hudson River Railroad , which was built in 1847 on 10th and 11th Avenues and thus separated Chelsea from the Hudson River . Clement Clarke Moore donated the orchard that grew his apple trees to the General Theological Seminary , which built its neo-Gothic campus there.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the area was mostly inhabited by people of Irish origin. Among them were many dock workers who were busy with the loading of shipments to and from the freight railway. The sometimes harsh customs of this world were the subject of the film Die Faust im Nacken (1954) and Richard Rodgers ' jazz ballet , "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" (1936).
Chelsea developed into a center of the film industry early on before the First World War . Some of the earliest films with Mary Pickford were shot on the upper floors of an ammunition dump on West 26th Street.
architecture
The architecture of Chelsea is distinct and diverse. Skyscrapers dominate the border with Midtown. Towards the south, the skyscrapers get lower and lower and in the middle there are mainly lofts and rental apartments. On the border with Greenwich Village and East Village, cheap rental houses and individual apartment buildings dominate. Skyscrapers and lofts are rarely found in the southern part, and the district extends over southern Times Square. On the Hudson, the proportion of living space is decreasing somewhat. The areas around Hudson are characterized by cheap restaurants, port warehouses and factories.
See also
literature
- WPA Guide to New York City , 1939
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jörg Häntzschel: “Chelsea must be rebuilt.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3./4. November 2012
Coordinates: 40 ° 45 ′ N , 74 ° 0 ′ W