PHOTO BY PETER JOSEPH

The Chelsea area’s official borders are Sixth to Tenth Avenues and Fourteenth to Thirty-fourth Streets, but we are going to be creative and end this tour in upper Greenwich Village. Chelsea was named after England’s Chelsea Royal Hospital by Thomas Clark, whose estate in 1750 stretched from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River and Fourteenth to Twenty-fourth Streets. Over the years, Chelsea included Tin Pan Alley—where many popular songwriters got their start—elegant department stores, and a large amount of New York City nightlife.

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union middleincome housing units—over twenty-eight hundred apartments—went up in 1962, and currently occupy Twenty-third to Twenty-ninth Streets between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

Union Organizer A. Philip Randolph (see Harlem tour) spent some of his later years here. The story of Chelsea today and of the last twenty years is of massive gentrification, outrageously expensive apartment buildings, and a thriving art community and gay and lesbian community. This area also elected the first HIV-Positive New York City Council member (and AIDS activist) Tom Duane in the 1990s.