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 The
Hotel Chelsea is a world renowned residence for
artists, musicians, writers, philosophers, and characters of the most
singular and eccentric stripe which the imagination might conjure. In the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, the hotel is located at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, near the Jacob K. Javits Center, Empire State Building, Midtown, Greenwich Village, and other NYC attractions. Built in 1883, the hotel welcomes guests, but is primarily known for its long-term residents, past and present. Complimentary Wi-Fi is available in all guest rooms of the Chelsea Hotel. 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.  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 home of bad
behavior. Bob Dylan composed songs 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 died of alcohol poisoning on in 1953, and
where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend,
Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978. Famous
visitors and residents of the Chelsea Hotel include Eugene O'Neil,
Thomas Wolfe, and Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001: A Space Oddyssey
while in residence). Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jimi
Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead passed through the hotels doors in the
1960s. Virgil Thompson, Larry Rivers, William Burroughs, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Patti Smith, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, and many, many others stayed here too. Who will be next? |
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