Change in West Chelsea

Two weekends ago, one Saturday morning in early May, I went for a walk in my neighborhood (West Chelsea in Manhattan). It was a perfect spring morning, not a single cloud in the sky. The Art Galleries west of Ninth Avenue were not yet open. I had only recently come back from a 12-day long stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and somehow, during this brief period of time, my neighborhood which I thought I knew so well after living here for ten years, had managed to change once again. (This was probably accentuated by the fact that my head was still full of pictures from Bosnia). The most noticeable change was the building tear-down at the Theological Seminary, which opens an entirely new vista to the beautiful Federal style townhouses on 20^th Street (a new vista which will not be there for long). When you live in New York, you mostly get used to this constant change and yet it still does manage to take you by surprise. Next time you come and visit this neighborhood it will probably look different yet again…