Black history is not confined to one month, or, for that matter, to any single neighborhood or even region. In Chelsea, for instance, it’s in just about every nook and cranny of that district’s architecture — if you know where to look.
“There’s a lot of people who do not know that this northern part of Chelsea, from 23rd Street and even into the lower 30s, an area that used to be known as the Tenderloin, was also one of the major African-American quarters of the city before Harlem,” said Laurence Frommer, co-president of the preservation group Save Chelsea, which organized a recent tour of the neighborhood’s African-American touchstones.
Lily Haight 