Landmarks of Chelsea
From The Peopling of NYC
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Hotel Chelsea is located at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
A Short History
1750 - The veteran officer of the French and Indian Wars, Captain Thomas Clarke, gave the name of Chelsea to his estate on the shores of the Hudson. It was on 23rd street between 9th & 10th Avenues.
1813 - Clement Clarke Moore, Captain Clarke's grandson, develops Chelsea. Moore developed a suburb from 19th St. to 24th St. between Eighth Avenue and the Hudson.
1884 - The Chelsea Hotel was built (as a twelve story apartment co-op building with forty units) by George M. Smith and designed by architects Hubert, Pirsson & Co. It was the tallest building in New York until 1902.
1903 - The Chelsea co-operative building goes bankrupt in wake of several financial panics and rising taxes.
1905 - The bankrupt Chelsea co-op became the Hotel Chelsea.
1939 - After the bankruptcy, the hotel was purchased by David Bard.
1964 - Now owned by Stanley Bard, the Hotel has expanded to 250 units.
The Hotel Chelsea is more famous for the people who lived there and for what happened there rather than for its physical attributes. Many famous writers, artists and musicians lived (and even died) in the Chelsea Hotel. It even became a local center for Leftist activism during the Great Depression.
Some famous Chelsea Hotel tenants include Mark Twain, Allen Ginsberg, Stanley Kubrick, Frida Khalo, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Sid Vicious.
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Sid Vicious, the bass player for the Sex Pistols, met and started a relationship with Nancy Spungen, which ultimately caused the break-up of the Sex Pistols as well as garnered the Hotel Chelsea its infamous reputation. Once they had started dating, their frequent use of drugs (heroin) and their erratic relationship caused problems for the band which were quite apparent during their 1978 American tour. The Sex Pistols broke up on Jan. 14, 1978 after their concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
Vicious had started his own solo career but things got out of control with the couple's drug addiction problems and Vicious' own "live hard, die young" punk philosophy. Vicious awoke in room 100 of the Hotel Chelsea on the morning of Oct. 12, 1978 to find Spungen dead in the bathroom, having bled to death from a stab wound. Even though he didn't remember committing the murder, he was charged with second degree homicide and was imprisoned on Rikers Island.
Upon his release, a party was thrown and it was there that he got his hands on a supply of heroin, overdosed and was found dead the next morning.
Ladies Mile Historic District
The Ladies Mile Historic District gets its name from its reputation as being the heart of the Gilded Age by being the most popular shopping center in America in the last decade of the nineteenth century as well as a prominent cultural center. Ladies from all around would come to shop for the finest products and to partake of the cultural atmosphere by attending galleries and concert hall performances.
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Hugh O'Neill Building
Hugh O'Neill was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1844 and arrived in New York at the age of 16. After the Civil War, he opened up a dry goods store north of Union Square on Broadway. The Broadway area was becoming a very exclusive shopping center, with lower priced shops moving to the west of 14th street, nearer to sixth avenue, so in 1870, O'Neill moved his store to its current location on sixth avenue and 20th street.
In 1887, O'Neill's became the store that we see today, an entire block-long store featuring cast-iron architecture that was painted white, providing a sharp contrast to other stores. His store was unique though because of the fact that it featured two 100 foot golden domes on the roof and raised letters of O'Neill's name on the front of the building. The building was designed by the architect Mortimer Merritt, who was called back in the 1890's to add a fifth floor to the building which was indistinguishable from the original building.
The store sold women's and children's clothing, rugs and other upholstery, and beauty products such as laces, silk and perfumes. The showroom on the second floor of the 21st street corner was exquisite, featuring Japanese papered ceiling and walls, a banquette running around a circular window and an ebony latticework with colored glass. In the early 1890's, O'Neill was employing 2,500 people from the Chelsea area.
O'Neill died in 1902. It was around this time that stores such as Macy's and B. Altman moved up to 34th street because the retail business on sixth avenue was failing. O'Neill's merged with Adam's Dry Goods in 1906 but the store failed and closed down in 1907 because of the increasing number of lofts and garment-manufacturing firms being built. Over the years, other companies have used the building, causing it to lose its magnificent domes and facade, but it has been recently renovated by the developer Miki Naftali and architects Cetra/Ruddy. The building now has two additional floors, for a total of seven floors, and has been turned into a luxury condominium with penthouse apartments. The renovation of the O'Neill building has brought about the return of the beautiful 100 foot golden domes which adorn the most elaborate penthouse suites.
Chelsea Market
The Chelsea Market is a popular shopping center located within the 22-building complex that used to be the Nabisco factory. It is located between 9th and 11th avenues and between 15th and 16th streets, taking up a full two blocks.
Back in 1890, The New York Biscuit Company was formed from the grouping together of eight other large eastern bakeries and many more smaller firms as competition against a Chicago based company called the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company. The National Biscuit Company (wasn't called Nabisco until 1971; rather known as N.B.C.) was created in 1898 by the combination of the rivaling companies which then led the National Biscuit Company to become the largest biscuit provider in the country.
In 1898, the company bought out many products such as Fig Newtons, Premium Saltines and Barnum's Animal Crackers, and in 1913, what is now known as America's favorite cookie, the Oreo was invented, as well as the Mallomar. The company became as widely known as it currently is due to extensive national marketing and attention to detail, consistency and shelf-life.
The bakery, originally designed by Romeyn & Stever, started out on 10th avenue going from 15th to 16th streets but from 1905 to 1912, it was expanded even further back to ninth avenue by Albert G. Zimmerman. The building's size kept growing in 1913 when Zimmerman built the centerpiece of the bakery complex, a building eleven stories tall, reaching from 10th to 11th avenue between 15th and 16th street. Some of the older 1890 bakeries on 10th avenue were rebuilt by Louis Wirsching Jr., giving those bakeries an unusual structural feature, the addition of an elevated railroad bridge as well as a pedestrian footbridge connecting the two main National Biscuit buildings across 10th avenue.
The National Biscuit Company had begun moving their facilities to New Jersey by 1958 and by 1959, they were gone, having sold the whole 22 building bakery complex, with 2 million square feet to Louis J. Glickman.
Currently, there are 24 shops food stores and restaurants on the ground level that have set up for business and space is available for newcomers to start selling their wares and other food or gift related products.
Chelsea Piers
The Chelsea Piers project was designed by Warren and Whitmore in 1910, who were concurrently designing Grand Central Terminal at the time. In the early 1900's, New York City was looking to make room for the newer and larger ships to dock but refused for a pier to be built any further into the North River than was already established as the limit or any further north of 23rd street because of already established railwork. As a result, the construction of the pier extended in the opposite direction, instead of going further out into the river, they demolished a part of 13th avenue, moving inland. Today only a small part of 13th avenue remains, towards lower Manhattan, and it isn't even marked as 13th avenue seeing as how only NYC Sanitation Department vehicles use the land.
The piers were heavily frequented until the mid 1930's when all major traffic was relocated to the New York Cruise Terminal from West 46th to 54th streets.
Before the relocation though, Chelsea Piers saw its fair share of fame, being the destination of the RMS Titanic which sank on April 14, 1912, two days before it's scheduled arrival at the piers. It was also the departure point of the RMS Lusitania in May of 1915 on her journey to England when she was shot by torpedoes from a German U-Boat, killing 124 Americans aboard and fueling public support of America's entry into WWI.
Today, Chelsea Piers is a popular sports and recreation center, the Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex, whose construction was started in 1994 and completed in stages starting from 1995. The Chelsea Piers complex is owned by Roland W. Betts.
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New York High Line
In the 1840's The West Side Railroad, also known was the West Side Line, was designed to facilitate the transportation of freight through or alongside the buildings of major factories and companies. A large number of accidents along tenth avenue, also known as Death Avenue, due to the colliding of trains and cars soon led to the building of the New York High Line in 1929. The New York High Line runs from 34th street to Gansevoort Street in New York City's Meat Packing District. It is almost one and a half miles long (1.45 miles)and is a part of the West Side Line. However, the High Line lived a short history. In 1934, New York City was hurt by the Great Depression. Later in the 1950's, trucks became the main means of transporting goods. In 1960's, a part of the railroad was torn down south of Bank Street. Service on the High Line continued until the 1980's. Most gaps in the buildings have been closed up except for the Westbeth building. The High Line was deemed structurally sound and the idea of turning the unused line into an above-ground garden open to the public was approved by the city in 2004, with construction having officially started in 2006. The park will run from Gansevoort Street up to 30th street.
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Covenant House
The Covenant House serves homeless and at-risk young people all day, every day. They provide nourishment, shelter and medical care to these youth because of organization's Christian principles which include serving God’s children with unconditional love.
The Covenant House began in New York City when Father Bruce Ritter sheltered six young children during a winter storm. He later founded and was the first president of Covenant House and, due to scandal, resigned from his position in the ‘90s when Sister Mary Rose McGeady became the new president.
The Covenant House's architecture is very unusual in that it greatly differs in architectural style compared to the surrounding architecture of buildings in Chelsea, although it does appear to mimic the surrounding style in the lower portion which touches the street.
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The Flatiron Building
Located on 23rd Street at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, the Flatiron building is known for its distinctive triangular framed structure resembling that of a clothing iron. Designed by Daniel Burnham, a Chicago architect, the 22-story building is embellished with white terra cotta, a hint of Italian Renaissance Adornment. Completed in 1902, the Flatiron building became the location for the offices of Fuller Construction Company, but served also as the headquarters for the Socialist Labor Party in the 1910's.
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