Hotel Chelsea: Difference between revisions

Hotel Chelsea
Hotel Chelsea
Location	222 West 23rd Street,Manhattan, New York City, New York
Built	1883
Architect	Hubert, Pirsson and Company
Added to NRHP	December 27, 1977

The Hotel Chelsea is a well-known residence for artists, musicians and writers in the neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan, New York City. It is located at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Built in 1883, the hotel welcomes guests, but is primarily known for its long-term residents, past and present.

The hotel has always been a center of artistic and bohemian activity and it houses artwork created by many of the artists who have visited. The hotel was the first building to be listed by New York City as a cultural preservation site and historic building of note.

The twelve-story red-brick building that now houses the Hotel Chelsea was built in 1883, and opened in 1884 as one of the city's first private apartment cooperatives.^[1] At the time Chelsea, and particularly the street on which the hotel was located, was the center of New York's Theater District. However, within a few years the combination of economic worries and the relocation of the theaters bankrupted the Chelsea cooperative. In 1905, the building was purchased and opened as a hotel. Since 1946, the hotel has been managed by the Bard family, and until recently was run by 72-year-old Stanley Bard who took over as managing director from his father in 1955. ^[2]On June 18, 2007, the hotel's board of directors ousted Bard as the hotel's manager. Marlene Krauss, a doctor who is the chief executive of KBL Healthcare Ventures, and David Elder, one of the heirs of an original owner who lives in California, replaced Stanley Bard with management company BD Hotels NY, L.L.C., who have since been terminated. Residents are fighting to return the Bards, as managers and majority shareholders, to the Chelsea Hotel and have mounted a campaign of banners, art pranks and other protests toward this end.^[1]

Owing to its long list of famous guests and residents, the hotel has an ornate history, both as a birth place of creative modern art and punctuated by tragedy catching the public eye. Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Richard and Rebecca Eller chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas was staying when he died of alcohol poisoning on November 4, 1953, and where Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, was found stabbed to death on October 12, 1978.^[2]

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles. (January 2009)

During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many great writers and thinkers including Mark Twain^[1], O. Henry^[1], Herbert Huncke^[3], Dylan Thomas^[1], Dale Beran, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Leonard Cohen, John Patrick Kennedy, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams^[1], Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac (who wrote On the Road here)^[3], Robert Hunter, Jack Gantos, Brendan Behan, Richard Collins, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Oppenheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bill Landis, Michelle Clifford, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Kennedy, Matthew Richardson, Stephen Mooney, Jan Cremer, and René Ricard. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room at the Chelsea on September 21, 1968.

The hotel has been a home to actors and film directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Cyndi Coyne, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Hill, Miloš Forman, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Eddie Izzard, Kevin O'Connor, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, Jane Fonda, and Gaby Hoffmann and her mother, the Warhol film star Viva and Edie Sedgwick.

Much of Hotel Chelsea's history has been colored by the musicians who have resided or visited there. Some of the most prominent names include The Grateful Dead, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Virgil Thomson, Dee Dee Ramone of The Ramones, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Marty Connolly, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious^[1], The Distillers, Richard Hell, glam rocker Jobriath, Rufus Wainwright, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, Indian musician Vasant Rai, and Leonard Cohen. More recently, artists such as Madonna, Ryan Adams, jAz jERicho, The Libertines, Melissa Auf der Maur, and Anthony Kiedis have spent time at The Chelsea.

The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Larry Rivers, Robert M. Lambert, Brett Whiteley, Christo, Arman, Richard Bernstein, Francesco Clemente, David Remfry, Philip Taaffe, Michele Zalopany, Ralph Gibson, Rene Shapshak, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Vali Myers, Donald Baechler, Herbert Gentry, Willem De Kooning, John Dahlberg and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at Hotel Chelsea. Painter & ethnomusicologist Harry Everett Smith lived and died at the Chelsea in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Cole lived there for 35 years until his death in 1988 at age 112, America's oldest living person. Bohemian abstract and Pop art painter Susan Olmetti creates paintings outside on the sidewalk during her frequent summer residencies at the hotel.^[4]

Charles James: Amongst the ranks of the legendary couturiers of the 20th Century who influenced fashion in the 1940s and 50s -- a man also credited with being America's first couturier. In 1964 he moved into the Chelsea Hotel in New York. James died of pneumonia at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978.

Hotel Chelsea is often associated with the Andy Warhol Superstars, as he directed The Chelsea Girls (1966), a film about his Factory regulars and their lives at the hotel. Chelsea residents from the Warhol scene included Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Larry Rivers, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America, and Brigid Berlin.

Ruth Harkness, an adventuress/naturalist who brought the first live giant panda from China to the U.S. in the 1930s, stayed at the Chelsea Hotel after her return to the States.

The hotel featured in

• Arena TV series Chelsea Hotel (1981) an edition of the popular BBC arts documentary series.
• The Chelsea Girls (1966) by Andy Warhol, in which the Superstars have roles
• Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986) by Adrian Lyne
• Sid & Nancy (1986) by Alex Cox
• Léon: The Professional (1994) by Luc Besson
• Midnight In Chelsea (1997) directed by Mark Pellington, a video to a track from the 1997 Jon Bon Jovi solo album Destination Anywhere
• Pie in the Sky the Brigid Berlin Story (2002) features a reunion between former resident Brigid Berlin and the artist Richard Bernstein at the Hotel.
• The Interpreter (2005)
• Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1996) various people are mentioned to have lived in the hotel.
• Chelsea Walls (2001) A movie about a new generation of artists living at the hotel.

Several survivors of the Titanic stayed for some time in this hotel as it is a short distance from Pier 54 where the Titanic was supposed to dock.

Much of an episode of the 1973 PBS reality television series An American Family was filmed at the Hotel Chelsea, as family member Lance Loud was staying there at the time.

A version of the opera Aida was filmed there with live lions.

The hotel is also featured in numerous songs, including:

• "Sara" by Bob Dylan, which refers to "Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you".
• "Chelsea Morning" by Joni Mitchell (Chelsea Clinton is named after the song and, by extension, the hotel)
• "Troubled Notes from the Hotel Chelsea" by Joe Myers and Casebeer was recorded while the artist couple were living in the Chelsea prior to 9-11
• "Sex with Sun-Ra (Part I - Saturnalia)" by Coil (the song's non-sequitur final line)
• "Chelsea Hotel" by Dan Bern
• "Dear Abbey" by Kinky Friedman
• "White China" by Fever Marlene (the band wrote and recorded their entire second album over a four night stay in room 219)
• "Chelsea Burns" and "Song to Alice" by Keren Ann
• "Chelsea Girls" by Nico
• "Midnight in Chelsea" by Jon Bon Jovi (the hotel is featured in the song's video, but the song itself is about the London neighborhood of the same name)
• "Ghosts" by Lisa Bastoni
• "Hi-Fi Popcorn" by The Revs
• "The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song" by Jeffrey Lewis (references Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel #2")
• "Chelsea Lovers" by Dave Stewart
• "Third Week in the Chelsea" by Jefferson Airplane, in which guitarist Jorma Kaukonen details the thoughts he is having about leaving the band.
• "We Will Fall" by The Stooges
• "Edie (Ciao Baby)" by The Cult
• "Crow" by Jim Carroll Band
• "Like a Drug I Never Did Before" by Joey Ramone of The Ramones
• "Godspeed" by Anberlin
• "Twenty-third Street" by Bill Morrissey
• "Chelsea Avenue" by Patti Scialfa, on her album 23rd Street Lullaby
• "Chelsea Hotel #2" by Leonard Cohen in which the singer remembers former lover Janis Joplin.
• "Chelsea" by Counting Crows, hidden track on Across a Wire: Live in New York City
• "Hotel Chelsea Nights" by Ryan Adams
• "City Rain, City Streets" by Ryan Adams
• "Chelsea Hotel" by Carissa's Wieird
• Most of the songs on Rufus Wainwright's second album Poses were written during his stay at the Chelsea Hotel in the summer of 1999
• "Chelsea Hotel '78" by Alejandro Escovedo
• "Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979" by Okkervil River
• Kim Wilde filmed her video for This I Swear in the hotel in 1995.
• Dave Gahan's video for "Saw Something" takes place in the hotel. The partner of Sid Vicious, who was one of Gahan's idols in the 1970s, was murdered in the hotel.

The hotel is possibly indirectly referenced in the Grateful Dead song "Stella Blue" (1970) by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Hunter was staying in the hotel when he wrote the song's lyrics, which contain the line, "I've stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel." The meaning of "blue-light" in this context has proven elusive.^[5]

The Libertines recorded either some or all of the Babyshambles Sessions while staying at the Chelsea Hotel in 2003 (there are conflicting reports as to exactly which songs were recorded at the hotel itself)^[6]. Frontman Pete Doherty gave away the entire sessions (featuring over 40 brand new separate recordings) to a fan who he met in the foyer of the hotel, after requesting on a messageboard for someone to help him put them on the internet for free.

• Chelsea Horror Hotel: A Novel by Dee Dee Ramone ISBN 1-56025-304-5
• Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World by Sarah Vowell ISBN 0-7432-0540-5
• Sex by Madonna ISBN 0-446-51732-1
• La cantante descalza y otros casos oscuros del rock by Jordi Soler ISBN 9-6819-0314-5
• Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws at New York's Rebel Mecca by Ed Hamilton ISBN 978-1568583792
• Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ISBN 978-0-30737-704-3
• The Chelsea Girl Murders by Sparkle Hayter ISBN 978-0-14200-010-6
• Ghost A firsthand account into the world of paranormal activity, by Katherine Ramsland. Published by Macmillan, ISBN 2001041725
• Revelations, A Blue Bloods Novel by Melissa de la Cruz ISBN 978-142310228-1

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  Hotel Chelsea
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  Hotel Chelsea sign

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hotel Chelsea.

• Hotel Chelsea official website
• Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog
• Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York's Rebel Mecca, by Ed Hamilton
• Inside: The Chelsea Hotel - short movie based on photographs by Julia Calfee
• Chelsea Hotel - New York Architecture Images

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