Where It’s Lush and Quiet in 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.
Chelsea owes its origin as a city neighborhood to Clement Clarke Moore, the putative author of “A Visit from St.Nicholas.”Moore was renowned in his time as a scholar and professor at General Theological Seminary, the location of which in Chelsea is therefore not coincidental with the neighborhood’s development as a whole. Moore subdivided the country estate, “Chelsea,” that had been created by his maternal grandfather, an English officer who named it for London’s military hospital. The block of 20th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues is one of the loveliest in New York, with outstanding Greek revival row houses on the south side, representing an early wave of Chelsea development, and the seminary campus on the north side.
The seminary occupies a full square block within which are several handsome 19th-century buildings, including a splendid chapel and lush landscaped grounds.Because there is no obvious access point around the block perimeter, few people realize that the campus is open to the public. You can enter the unprepossessing modern building at Ninth Avenue and 20th Street Monday to Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The guard will let you in, provided you have photo identification.
The modern building through which you pass backs onto the grounds and is architecturally the only false note in the entire campus. This building is to be replaced by a 17-story structure by Polshek Partnership, a firm that was known for its contextual sensitivity, until that sort of thing became passé.
The seminary opened on the site, called “Chelsea Square,” in 1826. But most of the campus as it is today resulted from an 1883 master plan by Charles Coolidge Haight, a prolific New York architect (whose credits include the old New York Cancer Hospital on Central Park West and 106th Street and the long-gone midtown campus of Columbia College) who was also the son of a seminary professor. Haight’s plan was implemented over a roughly 20-year period under Dean Eugene Augustus Hoffman, who paid from his own funds for much of the building. It is the most dour red-brick Victorian gabled Gothic, which, when matched with the ivy-covered walls, lushly green lawns, and mature trees, is a magical setting for an Episcopal seminary.
The best building by far is the 1888 Chapel of the Good Shepherd, with its 161-foot-high bell tower, in the north central part of the grounds. Inside, the dominating feature is a massive carved wood choir screen that frames views of a lovely stone reredos and stained glass window. The real treat is the bronze entry doors, the reliefs of which, by J. Massey Rhind, will remind you of the doors of Trinity Church at Wall Street — as well they might, given that Rhind worked on the Trinity doors.
Beyond the chapel on the north is Seabury Hall, a 1931 building by Alfred Githens, co-architect of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. It’s an excellent contextual work, as good in that way as Benjamin Wistar Morris’s west annex to the Pierpont Morgan Library. I pray that the new Polshek building will be half as good.
