Chelsea today is the center of the NYC Art scene with over 200 galleries and the Whitney Museum in the Meatpacking District.  The High Line Park, repurposed from elevated light-rail tracks, is among New York’s most visited sites and runs uptown to the Hudson Yards in Northwest Chelsea, one of the largest new developments in recent years, with its recognizable ‘Vessel‘ as a centerpiece. Chelsea has had a shifting history as an area of merchant class row-houses, transformed briefly into a theater district, and then a largely immigrant community. It shares a similar architectural and cultural character to the West Village. By the 1980s the modern trajectory of Chelsea was underway. Manhattan’s LGBTQ community had already begun to shift uptown from the Village, and art galleries began to open in former industrial loft spaces. It has restaurants and boutiques on its side streets, with a busy nightlife scene along its main drag on Eighth Avenue.

Notable Chelsea architecture includes a Landmarked Historic District of Greek Revival and Italianate townhouses; plus the historic General Theological Seminary campus. These live side-by-side with modern luxury developments by a roster of world-class architects that include Zaha Hadid, Frank Gherry, Bjarke Ingels, Winka Dubbeldam, and Thomas Heatherwick. Chelsea runs west of Sixth Avenue, south of 34th Street to 14th Street, and to the Hudson River. The adjacent Landmarked Meatpacking District, is a center of downtown nightlife today, which started as a food processing warehouse district. I was a founding member of Corcoran’s Chelsea office and I love the neighborhood for both its strong sense of community, and as the heartbeat of the NYC Arts scene.

The Flatiron District derives its name from the iconic Flatiron Building at 23^rd Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. It is about as central as is possible in Manhattan. Flatiron was a fashionable shopping district of the late 19^th Century as part of the “Ladies’ Mile”.