Hotel Chelsea — New York, United States
About Hotel Chelsea
When the artistically-minded (and lenient) manager, Sydney Bard, was pushed out of the struggling Chelsea, the run-down building's board began to see a new future of profitability. That's not typically a recipe for a continuing artistic zeitgeist, but it did offer a renewed chance for literary pilgrims to spend the night soaking in the Bohemian vibe that made the Chelsea an melage of artistic, literary, and musical innovations for decades. Today, you will find the Victorian stairway lined with the art of residents past, but you won't find their lifestyles, or rooms that were familiar to these residents. The walls have been rearranged, some more iconic rooms are still residential or had walls rearranged, and the worlds of those residents are now re-decorated to fit a less shabby ode to Bohemia (the website comes with a "wellness" section today, hyping the rooftop spa, which feels hilario…
Literary significance
The lobby bar and garden room today are "granny chic" and Old New York high-end, reminiscent more of Wilde than of impoverished co-op genre-benders.
Authors
- Arthur Miller
- Thomas Wolfe
- Allen Ginsberg
- William S. Burroughs
- Patti Smith
- Dylan Thomas
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Edgar Lee Masters
- O. Henry
- Jack Kerouac
- Eugene O'Neill
- Mark Twain
- Gore Vidal
- Tennessee Williams
Location
222 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011, United States