Residents of the famous Chelsea Hotel read like a Who’s Who in American Culture. Among them have been Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, O'Henry, Virgil Thomson, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, Jasper Johns, William de Koening, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac. Another resident, folk singer Joni Mitchell, wrote the song Chelsea Morning which made this establishment even more famous. The Queen Anne-styled building dates back to 1883 and was designed as one of the City first cooperative apartment buildings. It was converted into a hotel in 1905.
The Chelsea neighborhood was named by Thomas Clarke, a retired British seaman who brought property in this area and named it after the Chelsea Hospital, a facility for sailors, in his native London. Clarke's son, Clement Clarke Moore, would write the classic children's tale, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." This area of Manhattan is just north of Greenwich Village running from West 14th to West 23rd Streets and west to the Hudson River. The hotel is at 222 W. 23rd Street.
A spectacular park, the High Line, is planned for Chelsea. It is being built along the Hudson River at West 23rd Street on an area that is an abandoned elevated railway. It will include a modern residential tower, the High Line Tower.