Hotel Chelsea

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The Hotel Chelsea.

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.

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 red-brick building that now houses the Hotel Chelsea was built in 1883 as a private apartment cooperative that opened in 1884. Standing twelve storeys tall, it was the tallest building in New York until 1902. 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 is currently run by 72-year-old Stanley Bard who took over as managing director from his father in 1955. ^[1]

It is perhaps best-known as the hotel 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
2 Education
3 Hotel Chelsea in culture
4 References
5 Gallery
6 External links

[edit] People who live/have lived at the Hotel Chelsea

[edit] 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 and René Ricard. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room at the Chelsea on September 21, 1968.

[edit] Warhol Superstars

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 Viva, Larry Rivers, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Edie Sedgwick, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America, and Brigid Berlin.

[edit] 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 at one point during her long decline into alcoholic oblivion.

[edit] Education

Hotel Chelsea residents are zoned to schools in the New York City Department of Education:

Residents must apply to New York City high schools.

[edit] Hotel Chelsea in culture

[edit] Films

The hotel was used for location shooting on

The Chelsea Girls (1966) by Andy Warhol, in which the Superstars have roles
Sid & Nancy (1986) by Alex Cox
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
Chelsea Walls (2001) by Ethan Hawke
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)
Rest Stop for the Rare Individual (2006)

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.

The novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey were written by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick during their stay at the hotel.

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.

[edit] Music

The hotel is also featured in numerous songs, including:

"Chelsea Morning" by Joni Mitchell (Chelsea Clinton is named after the song and, vicariously, the hotel)
"Hotel Chelsea Nights" by Ryan Adams from Love Is Hell pt. 2 and Love Is Hell
"Chelsea Hotel #2" by Leonard Cohen from New Skin for the Old Ceremony (about sex with Janis Joplin)
"Sara" by Bob Dylan (as the location where Dylan wrote his epic "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands")
"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
"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")
"Third Week in the Chelsea" by Jefferson Airplane
"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
"Chelsea" by Counting Crows, hidden track on Across a Wire: Live in New York City
"Twenty-third Street" by Bill Morrissey

Most of the songs off of Rufus Wainwright's sophomore album Poses were written during his stay at the Chelsea Hotel in the summer of 1999.

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]