The Once and Future Chelsea
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The far west of Chelsea has in recent years unexpectedly taken shape as the city’s blue-chip art-gallery district. Galleries once in SoHo or on 57th Street now occupy former truck warehouses and other nondescript buildings in a once energized, now forlorn part of Manhattan. The area bustled when oceangoing passenger and freight ships docked on the West Side, and an intricate system of waterfront railways and warehouses hummed.
Though that scene has long disappeared, some structures remind us of it. The High Line once carried freight trains of the New York Central Railroad. Running south from 30th Street just west of Tenth Avenue, the elevated railway structure, built in the 1930s, has not been used since 1980, but is slated to become a chic linear park. It forms a kind of portal to the blocks of the 20s west of Tenth Avenue, where most of the galleries are located. Another reminder is the glorious Starrett-Lehigh Building of 1930–31, at Eleventh Avenue and 26th Street. The massive structure, in a striking streamlined modern style, served freight trains of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Trains pulled into the ground floor, and gigantic elevators carried freight cars to warehouse floors above.
A good block from which to take the district’s measure is 22nd Street between Tenth and Eleventh avenues. The Dia Art Foundation, since departed, opened at no. 548 in 1990, and sponsored the installation of the trees and rocks one sees along the sidewalks of this block. The German artist Joseph Beuys created the installation. High-end retail has inevitably arrived, a memorably designed example being the Comme des Garçons shop at no. 520 in a building that still bears its old sign for Heavenly Body Works. Galleries on the block include such well-known names as Sonnabend, PaceWildenstein, and Max Protetch.
Across Eleventh Avenue range the Chelsea Piers, between 17th and 23rd streets. In a spectacular instance of adaptive reuse by entrepreneurs Roland Betts and Tom Bernstein, the piers once used for passenger ocean liners now serve a vast sports and fitness complex that opened in 1995. The magnificent structures designed by Warren & Wetmore in 1902–07 were unfortunately remodeled to their present banal appearance in the 1960s, shortly before the piers ceased operating. (The destination of the Titanic was Pier 54 at 19th Street.) The consequent yawning nondescriptness of the waterfront has made this a suitable place for showy object buildings. An example is Frank Gehry’s first building in New York, the InterActive Corp. Building at the northeast corner of Eleventh Avenue and 17th Street. The billowy white building, likened to a sail, seems entirely apposite for its site, where it does not compete with a settled cityscape.
The remoteness of the gallery district, not least its remoteness from subways, makes it unlike any other part of Manhattan, andfull of surprises for the alert walker.
