Origins of Chelsea...and Santa Clause

Moore's poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"

A version of this story was published in the New York Times on December 15, 2013.

Clement Moore is widely recognized for writing "A Visit from St. Nicholas," the iconic Christmas poem that defined many modern conceptions of Santa Clause and famously begins "'Twas the night before Christmas..."  Moore is less known for his role in developing the Manhattan village of Chelsea, which has its origins in Moore's carving up his mansion and farmland named "Chelsea" that spanned modern day 8th to 10th avenues and between 19th and 24th streets, into lots to sell to wealthy New Yorkers.

As the city of New York grew north, a commission was established to evaluate how best to establish the streets and avenues of the burgeoning city.  That commission laid out a plan for a grid system of streets and avenues in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811.  Not all New Yorkers celebrated the plan, including Clement Moore who was so outraged that he penned a vehement sixty page opposition addressed to fellow land owners impacted by the plan, noting the plan wrongfully deprived land owners of land required to make room for the new streets and avenues, forced land owners' fences to be torn down and put back up, and even caused some (himself included) to tear down their beloved apple trees in the process.

Clement Moore (1779-1863)

Beyond his distaste for the "cutting and carving up of the property of others," Moore slammed the plan as de-beautifying Manhattan by its call to flatten the Manhattan terrain.  These commissioners "would have cut down the seven hills of Rome," according to Moore.  While the commissioners attempted to appease property owners with the gain in financial value to their land that would result from the grid, Moore laughed at this notion as pure speculation rooted not in facts but some "spirit of divination."

As all New Yorkers know, Moore's rhetoric did not stop the grid from being implemented.  Left with no choice but to embrace the grid, Moore began the development of Chelsea around 1830 by dividing up tracts of land for sale.  One of the earliest maps of Chelsea is Moore's 1835 map of property showing the developmental plan of Chelsea from 8th to 10th avenues and 19th to 24th streets.  Moore envisioned Chelsea as an upstanding residential neighborhood, and included in the deed covenants architectural requirements, lot front coverage and setbacks, and provisions maintaining the land for residential use and prohibiting use for stables, trade, or manufacturing.



"Map of Property Belonging to C.C. Moore at Chelsea 1835"

Moore also donated land from his apple orchard to the Episcopal Diocese for construction of the General Theological Seminary.  Moore required that the Episcopal Diocese issue him a mortgage for $7,320, the estimated value of the full square block of Manhattan real estate from 9th to 10th avenues and in between 20th and 21st streets, with instructions that the Diocese pay him principal and interest if the land is ever used for purposed other than a seminary.  Moore became the seminary's first professor of Greek and Hebrew literature.  A stodgy academic, Moore published such works as the two-volume tome "A Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew language."

It is ironic that Moore, perhaps the father of Chelsea and a rigid academic, also penned the Christmas poem which engendered many of the modern conceptions of Santa Clause, the "jolly old elf" with a reindeer-pulled sleigh who makes his Christmas Eve ride.  Moore wrote the poem when he was just 24 to read to his children as entertainment.  According to legend, Moore penned the poem on Christmas Eve of 1822 after he took a snowy sleigh ride home from market in Greenwich Village driven by a roly-poly Dutchman, who served as his inspiration for St. Nick.  The poem was published anonymously in the New York newspaper the Sentinel in 1823, perhaps so that Moore's academic reputation would not be diminished by a silly Christmas poem he once dismissed as a "mere trifle," but Moore subsequently claimed credit for the work more than a decade later.