Bordered by the Hudson River, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, Hell’s Kitchen, and the Garment District on the city’s West Side, Chelsea is regarded as the center of New York’s contemporary art world, with many high-profile galleries and avant-garde arthouses found in new buildings and renovated warehouses.
It has grown into a popular area for alternative shopping as well, with venues ranging from Barneys CO-OP to Balenciaga boutiques; and when celebrities are looking for off-the-grid things to do in Manhattan, they escape to Chelsea’s notorious club scene. A favorite spot for the motion picture industry prior to WWI, some of Mary Pickford’s first pictures were in these buildings (while she was no doubt living at The Knickerbocker!).
Chelsea Art Galleries
In the late 1990s, New York’s visual arts community began moving out of high-rent SoHo storefronts to the west side streets of Chelsea. Today, there are some 350 art galleries between tenth and eleventh avenues and 18th and 27th streets, making this neighborhood the epicenter of contemporary art in New York. Spend an afternoon strolling the side streets, slipping in and out of galleries, and stopping for coffee along the...
No trip to Chelsea is complete without a stroll through the historic Chelsea Market, once the location of Nabisco’s New York factory. One block long and one block wide, the market is now a mecca for foodies, with more than thirty-five vendors offering everything from hummus to halvah. Visitors ambling between the shops here during meal times will rub shoulders with Chelsea locals and workers—including staff from television’s Food Network,...
Spanning four piers and 28 acres of waterfront real estate, Chelsea Piers is the city’s premier sports complex. The historic piers were used by Cunard Line’s famous Lusitania and Mauretania in the early 20th century, and were the destination for White Star Line’s Titanic. In the ’90s, long after the golden age of transatlantic ocean liners, the piers transformed into a massive collection of world-class sporting facilities. Today, locals and...
Part historic landmark, part park-in-the-sky, the High Line is a one-and-a-half-mile walkway that weaves through Chelsea. Snaking from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District more than 20 blocks up to 34th Street, this former commercial railroad track is now landscaped with lush greenery. Thanks to a local resident and railroad enthusiast who saved the tracks from demolition in the 1980s, the century-old structure has been refurbished into a green oasis...
Housed in the famous Fashion Institute of Technology, the Museum at FIT is dedicated to, you guessed it, all things fashion. Spanning 250 years of garments from the 18th century to today, the museum has a special focus on the avant-garde. What to see at the Museum at FIT The permanent collection features an astounding 50,000 pieces of outfits, textiles and accessories, and highlights influential designers such as Chanel and...
On the corner of 17th Street and 7th Avenue in the heart of Chelsea—in the former Barneys building—the Rubin Museum of Art celebrates artwork from the Himalayas, including the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding regions in Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Mongolia. Thousands of pieces of art spanning fifteen centuries delight the senses and challenge the mind in a space that aims to bridge eastern and western cultures. What...
