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Hotel Chelsea

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Hotel Chelsea
Hotel Chelsea
Location222 West 23rd Street,Manhattan, New York City, New York
Built1883
Added to NRHPDecember 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.

History

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 as a private apartment cooperative that opened in 1884; it was the tallest building in New York until 1899. 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. [1]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. [citation needed]

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 and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas had died of alcohol poisoning on November 4, 1953, and where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.[1]

People who live/have lived at the Hotel Chelsea

Writers and thinkers

Art fills the staircase of the Hotel Chelsea

During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many great writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Herbert Huncke, Dylan Thomas, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Robert Hunter, Jack Gantos, Brendan Behan, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Oppenheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bill Landis, Michelle Clifford, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Matthew Richardson, Peggy Biderman, Raymond Foye, and René Ricard. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room at the Chelsea on September 21, 1968.

Actors and film directors

The hotel has been a home to actors and film directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Mitch Hedberg, Miloš Forman, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, Jane Fonda, and Gaby Hoffmann and her mother, the Warhol film star Viva.

Musicians

Much of Hotel Chelsea's history has been colored by the musicians who have resided there. Some of the most prominent names include Pete Doherty, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Virgil Thomson, Dee Dee Ramone of The Ramones, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Richard Hell, Ryan Adams, Jobriath, Rufus Wainwright, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, Leonard Cohen and Anthony Kiedis.

Visual artists

The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Larry Rivers, Brett Whiteley, Christo, Arman, Richard Bernstein, Francesco Clemente, Philip Taaffe, Ralph Gibson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Vali Myers, Donald Baechler, Willem De Kooning and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at Hotel Chelsea. Painter & ethnomusicologist Harry Smith lived and died at the Chelsea in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Cole lived there for 35 years until his death at age 112, the world's oldest living person at that time, in 1988.

Fashion Designers

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.

Warhol Superstars

File:Room-412.jpg
A standard room for rent at the Hotel Chelsea

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.

Explorers

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.

Films

The hotel was used for location shooting on

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.

Music

The hotel is also featured in numerous songs, including:

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.[2]

Books

  • Hotel Chelsea
    Hotel Chelsea

References

  1. ^ a b http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/destinations/usa/article1464271.ece New York Storeys The Times Online, 25 March 2007
  2. ^ http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/stella.html#eliot
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