[10] The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and expanded in 1982 to include contiguous blocks containing particularly significant examples of period architecture.

The neighborhood is primarily residential, with a mix of tenements, apartment blocks, two city housing projects, townhouses, and renovated rowhouses, but its many retail businesses reflect the ethnic and social diversity of the population.

Chelsea takes its name from the estate and Georgian-style house of retired British Major Thomas Clarke, who obtained the property when he bought the farm of Jacob Somerindyck on August 16, 1750.

Moore is generally credited with writing "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and was the author of the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons printed in the United States.

In 1827, Moore gave the land of his apple orchard to the Episcopal Diocese of New York for the General Theological Seminary, which built its brownstone Gothic, tree-shaded campus south of the manor house.

[13] Covenants in the deeds of sale specified what could be built on the land – stables, manufacturing and commercial uses were forbidden – as well as architectural details of the buildings.

[14] The new neighborhood thrived for three decades, with many single family homes and rowhouses, in the process expanding past the original boundaries of Clarke's estate, but an industrial zone also began to develop along the Hudson.

By the time of the Civil War, the area west of Ninth Avenue and below 20th Street was the location of numerous distilleries making turpentine and camphene, a lamp fuel.

[c] As well as the piers, warehouses and factories, the industrial area west of Tenth Avenue also included lumberyards and breweries, and tenements built to house the workers.

According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, these ranged "from printing shops and box companies, to milk-bottling plants and electrical wire and cable manufacturers".

[24] For census purposes, the New York City government classifies Chelsea as part of a larger neighborhood tabulation area called Hudson Yards-Chelsea-Flat Iron-Union Square.

[30] Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Hudson Yards-Chelsea-Flat Iron-Union Square was 70,150, a change of 14,311 (20.4%) from the 55,839 counted in 2000.

Based on this calculation, as of 2018[update], Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen are considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.

The community, in fact, is home to many highly regarded performance venues, among them the Joyce Theater, one of the city's premier modern dance emporiums, and The Kitchen, a center for cutting-edge theatrical and visual arts.

[20] With a change in zoning resolution in conjunction with the development of the High Line, Chelsea experienced a new construction boom, with projects by notable architects such as Shigeru Ban, Neil Denari, Jean Nouvel, and Frank Gehry.

It is often considered the area of Chelsea between the Hudson River to the west and Tenth Avenue to the east, a portion of which was designated a historic district in 2008.

It was founded in Greenwich Village in 1971 by Steina and Woody Vasulka, taking its name from the original location, the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center.

[50] The warehouse building at 530 West 27th Street, which was the site of The Sound Factory & Twilo,[51] as well as several other megaclubs in the 1980s and 1990s, was acquired in 2011 by the British theater company Punchdrunk, who converted it into "The McKittrick Hotel", a five-story, 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) performance space housing their immersive site-specific theatrical production, Sleep No More.

The building, along with those at 532 and 542 West 27th Street, is also the location of several restaurants and event venues that relate to the themes and stories told in the hotel, such as 'Speakeasy Magick', featuring Todd Robbins, Jason Suran, and Matthew Holtzclaw.

[56] The Starrett-Lehigh Building, a huge full-block freight terminal and warehouse on West 26th Street between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues, was built in 1930–1931 as a joint venture of the Starett real estate firm and the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

[57] Hotel Chelsea, built 1883–1885 and designed by Hubert, Pirsson & Co., was New York's first cooperative apartment complex[10] and was the tallest building in the city until 1902.

[58] The hotel attracted attention as the place where Dylan Thomas had been staying when he died in 1953 at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, and for the 1978 slaying of Nancy Spungen for which Sid Vicious was accused.

The hotel has been the home of numerous celebrities, including Brendan Behan, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams and Virgil Thomson,[10] and the subject of books, films (Chelsea Girls, 1966) and music.

[60] The Chelsea Piers were the city's primary luxury ocean liner terminal from 1910 until 1935, when the growing size of ships made the complex inadequate.

The building, which featured an octagonal spire,[66] was burned in a serious fire in 1990, but stained glass windows by William Jay Bolton survived, and the church reopened in April 1994 after a major restoration.

[10] The Episcopal parish is notable for hosting the city's largest program to feed the poor,[67] and is the second and larger home of the LGBTQ-oriented synagogue, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah.

[33]: 14 The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen is 0.0098 mg/m3 (9.8×10−9 oz/cu ft), more than the city average.

[33]: 6  The percentage of Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen students excelling in math rose from 61% in 2000 to 80% in 2011, and reading achievement increased from 66% to 68% during the same time period.

[86] Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is lower than the rest of New York City.

[90] The Center for Jewish History, a consortium of several national research organizations, is a unified library, exhibition, conference, lecture, and performance venue, located on 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.