If Chelsea has a main drag it's Eighth Avenue , where the transformation of the neighborhood is most pronounced. This area has a vibrant retail energy to rival the fast-moving traffic in the street. A spate of bars, restaurants, health food stores, gyms, bookstores and clothes shops have opened in the last five years, and while it's not exactly a picturesque route, a few minor diversions into the cross town streets will suffice to restore faith in the architectural beauty of New York.

One of the best places in the city to see modern dance is the Art Deco-style Joyce Theater at 175 Eighth Ave, where the accomplished Feld Ballet is in residence.

Just round the corner on Ninth Avenue , the redbrick Chelsea Market , housed in an old Nabisco factory, is an emporium of fresh gourmet produce filling an entire block between 15th and 16th streets.

Further north the cross streets between Ninth and Tenth avenues, specifically 20th, 21st and 22nd streets, constitute the Chelsea Historic District . Although the label "district" is a bit grand for an area of three blocks, it boasts a great variety of predominantly Italianate and Greek Revival rowhouses in brick and various shades of brownstone. At the corner of 22nd Street and Tenth Avenue, the nineteenth century meets the modern era in the aluminum-sided Empire Diner , built in the 1930s.

Between Ninth and Tenth avenues and 20th and 21st streets lies one of Chelsea's secrets: the General Theological Seminary . Clement Clarke Moore donated the land to the institute where he formerly taught, and today the harmonious assembly of ivy-clad Gothicisms surrounding a restive green feels like part of an elite college campus. Though the buildings, most of which were completed in the nineteenth century, still house a working seminary, it's possible to explore the park on weekdays and Saturday lunchtimes, as long as you sign in and keep quiet (the entrance is via the modern building on Ninth Avenue). And if you're at all interested in theological history, you should check out their collection of Latin bibles - it's one of the largest in the world.

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