Wide brick warehouse blocks run under the High Line toward the river, with Cushman Row's Greek Revival houses a few streets east.
What Chelsea looks like
Wide avenues cross the west side, lined with red brick warehouses four to six storeys tall. Round arched windows and painted lettering climb the upper walls, and roll down doors sit along the sidewalk. runs on steel columns through the middle of the blocks rather than over an avenue, crossing the side streets at rooftop height.
fills a full block in ribbons of steel windows and brick spandrels, its corners curving instead of meeting square. is one long run of arched windows and dark red brick, its name spelled out in metal letters across the top. Both date from the years between 1890 and 1931. West of Eleventh Avenue the streets run down to the Hudson, past the piers and onto the timber float bridge at , where the retired fireboat John J Harvey is moored beside an old rail caboose.
East of Tenth Avenue the blocks turn residential, rows of brick and brownstone houses set back behind small iron fenced yards. keeps its Greek Revival doorways and dentilled cornices, facing a stone tower with a working clock at . fills a whole block with matching brick wings and arched entrances.
A block of exposed brick on Ninth Avenue reads in gold letters over the glass doors. A stainless steel diner sits under a lit EAT sign on its own corner nearby. An older hotel two blocks east rises in red brick, its cast iron balconies stacked beneath a vertical sign that glows above the sidewalk.
Shot in Chelsea
The Empire Diner and the Hotel Chelsea have both appeared on screen, and both are still open today. The diner played itself in Men in Black II, while the hotel's interior stood in for a fictional hotel in Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Men in Black II, 2002
Played a diner, New York City
Agent J takes Laura Vasquez to the Empire Diner at 210 Tenth Avenue, on the corner of West 22nd Street. It is a stainless steel dining car with EAT painted across the wall behind it, and both are still there today.
Manhattan Murder Mystery, 1993
Played the Hotel Waldron, New York City, 1993
The hotel where the body turns up is called the Waldron in the film. Its exterior is a building on East 17th Street. Its interior is the Hotel Chelsea at 222 West 23rd Street, a red brick block with cast iron balconies across every floor.
DUMBO's brick warehouses along Water and Plymouth Streets carry the same round arched windows and loading bays as the blocks on Eleventh Avenue, at a similar four to six storey scale. The Manhattan Bridge crosses overhead there the way the High Line crosses these side streets, so a wide shot under either structure reads the same way. DUMBO's cobblestone paving and the closer view of the bridge towers give it away in a wide shot, so a tighter frame along one warehouse wall holds the match best. Try searching brick warehouse loading bays now.
West Loop in Chicago, Illinois
The old produce warehouses and meatpacking plants around Fulton Market carry the same red brick and loading canopies as these blocks, most of them built in the same decades. Randolph Street still has the same low profile and broad lanes of a working freight district. Chicago's warehouses sit lower and the street grid runs wider, so keep the frame close to one facade rather than pulling back to a full block. Try searching red brick loading canopies now.
The Distillery District has cobblestone lanes and dark red brick industrial buildings from a similar age, though built at a tighter, smaller scale than these blocks. Its buildings sit closer together than the wide avenues under the High Line. Keep the street width out of frame and the comparison holds, since Toronto's lanes are noticeably narrower than an avenue. Try searching cobblestone lanes red brick now.
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