Chelsea Hotel

İ have visited the mythical Chelsea Hotel years ago,

visiting a friend's friend residing in a studio at the hotel.

i was pretty excited to share the same corridors as Janis Joplin,Charles Bukowski,Bob Dylan,Patti Smith...

The empty corridors made me feel that ghosts and the memory of all residents were still there

a wierd feeling..

Since August 2011,the hotel shut its doors

hopefully with the renovation or whatever they are planning to do,the most important thing meaning the spirit of the Chelsea will not vanish forever

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2028125/Hotel-Chelsea-New-York-closes-Where-Dylan-Thomas-drank-death.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/nyregion/historic-chelsea-hotel-closes-to-guests.html?pagewanted=all

From wikipedia.org/free encyclopedia:

''The Hotel Chelsea, also known as the Chelsea Hotel, or simply the Chelsea, is a historic New York City hotel and landmark, known primarily for its history of notable residents. Located at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, the 250-unit hotel has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists, andactors, including Bob Dylan, Virgil Thomson, Charles Bukowski, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Jobriath, and Larry Rivers.

Though the Hotel Chelsea no longer accepts new long-term residencies, the building is still home to many residents who lived there before the change of policy. As of August 1, 2011, the hotel has stopped accepting guests.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corsochose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomaswas staying when he died of pneumonia on November 9, 1953, and where Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, was found stabbed to death on October 12, 1978.

The building has been a designated New York City landmark since 1966, and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977.

Built between 1883 and 1885 and opened for initial occupation in 1884,the twelve-story red-brick building that is now the Hotel Chelsea was one of the city's first private apartment cooperatives. It was designed by the firm of Hubert, Pirsson & Company in a style that has been described variously as Queen Anne Revival and Victorian Gothic.Among its distinctive features are the delicate, flower-ornamented iron balconies on its facade, which were constructed by J.B. and J.M Cornell and its grand staircase, which extends upward twelve floors. Generally, this staircase is only accessible to registered guests, although the hotel does offer monthly tours to others.

At the time of its construction, the building was the tallest in New York, and its surrounding neighborhood constituted the center of New York's theater district.However, within a few years the combination of economic stresses and the relocation of the theaters bankrupted the Chelsea cooperative. In 1905, the building reopened as a hotel, which was later managed by Knott Hotels and resident manager A. R. Walty. After the hotel went bankrupt, it was purchased in 1939 by Joseph Gross, Julius Krauss, and David Bard,and these partners managed the hotel together until the early 1970s. With the passing of Joseph Gross and Julius Krauss, the management fell to Stanley Bard, David Bard's son.

On June 18, 2007, the hotel's board of directors ousted Bard as the hotel's manager. Dr. Marlene Krauss, the daughter of Julius Krauss, and David Elder, the grandson of Joseph Gross and the son of playwright and screenwriter Lonne Elder III, replaced Stanley Bard with the management company BD Hotels NY; that firm has since been terminated as well.

In May 2011, the hotel has been sold to real estate developer Joseph Chetrit for $80 Million US Dollars.

As of August 1st, 2011 the storied hotel will no longer take reservations from guests.

The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Joe Andoe, Larry Rivers, Brett Whiteley, Christo, Arman, Sheila Berger, Richard Bernstein, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Ana de Portela, Ching Ho Cheng, David Remfry, Philip Taaffe, Ralph Gibson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peggy Biderman, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Edie Sedgwick, Claes Oldenburg, Vali Myers, Donald Baechler, Herbert Gentry, Willem De Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe Photographer, friend and roommate to Patti Smith, Lynne Drexler, Nora Sumberg and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at Hotel Chelsea. The painter Barnett Rubenstein, who was born in Chelsea MA, lived in the Chelsea Hotel for decades even as he taught at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Painter & ethnomusicologistHarry Everett Smith lived and died at the Chelsea in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole lived there for 35 years until his death in 1988 at age 112, when he was the oldest living man.Bohemian abstract and Pop art painter Susan Olmetti creates paintings outside on the sidewalk during her frequent summer residencies at the hotel.

During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many great artists such as:

reat writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry,Herbert Huncke,Dylan Thomas,Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Arnold Weinstein,Leonard Cohen, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams,Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac (who wrote On the Road there),Robert Hunter, Jack Gantos, Brendan Behan,Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski

Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Hill,Miloš Forman, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Vincent Gallo, Patricia Chica, Eddie Izzard, Hal Miller, Kevin O'Connor, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, Elaine Stritch, Michael Imperioli, Jane Fonda, Gaby Hoffmann and her mother, the Warhol film star Viva, and Edie Sedgwick.Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Bobby "Werner" Strete, Mod Fun, Virgil Thomson, Jeff Beck, Chick Corea, Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Phil Lynott, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf,Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Alejandro Escovedo, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Walker, Canned Heat, Sid Vicious, Vivian Stanshall, Richard Hell, Jobriath Boone, Little Annie, Rufus Wainwright, Lance Loud, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, Vasant Rai, Jacques Labouchere, and Leonard Cohen. Madonna lived at the Chelsea in the early eighties, returning in 1992 to shoot photographs for her book, Sex, in room 822.

Warhol superstars:Edie Sedgwick,Viva, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America, and Brigid Berlin.

Others

New York event promoter Susanne Bartsch lives at the Chelsea Hotel. Several survivors of the Titanic stayed for some time in this hotel as it is a short distance from Pier 54, the White Star Line dock where the Titanic was supposed to make landfall. The Chelsea was also home to many sailors returning from their duties in World War I. Ruth Harkness, an adventurer/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.''