Hotel Chelsea
222 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011
Guys, there’s too much lore to unpack with this one! The amount of history this building holds is truly astonishing. It amazes me that I could walk by a building and go, “Wow, that looks interesting!” and find a mountain of information that inspires me/ creeps me out/ angers me/ makes me fall in love with this city. That’s why I love doing these newsletters. New York has such a rich and complicated history & the buildings hold these stories. Ugh, okay! That’s enough being of me being sappy for now!
I won’t even be covering the tip of the iceberg with this one, but I’ll do my best to give you an entertaining overview. This building was originally an apartment complex built between 1883 and 1884 and was designed by Phillip Hubert. Hubert was a bit of a gatekeeper, in a sense, and had a lot of control over who lived in the apartments he made. Okay not just him, but like him and his friends. And here’s where the concept of co-op apartment complexes began (not like literally here, but this time period).
He built several apartment complexes that he made sure housed people of similar interests (writers, artists, gentrifiers, etc). With this particular apartment, however, he wanted a variety of people from all types of backgrounds (mostly rich). He made apartments boujee enough to entice middle to upper-class New Yorkers to ditch their fancy houses (or at the very least add to their collection). I see no long-term downside to this.
The style of this building has been described as “Queen Anne Revival” and “Victorian Gothic”; or as I’d describe it, “very cool”. At the time of its completion, it was one of the tallest structures in Manhattan at approximately 180 feet tall. Take me back to the good ol’ days, amiright?? Made of mostly brick, stone, and brass (chef's kiss), the facade of this building remains mostly intact from its original ~140-year-old design! LOVE THAT FOR HER! Let women age!!
In 1905, the building was converted into an apartment-hotel combo with rooms as low as $1.05 a night (which would be roughly $35 now). Fast forward to 1941, the hotel went bankrupt! Yikes! The New York Bank for Savings sold the hotel to the Chelsea Hotel Company and they got to work updating the plumbing, electrical, elevators, etc. By the 1960s, the building was in tip-top shape but the surrounding area (which used to be the theater district) had turned into a bit of a dump tbh. But not to worry, my man Stanley’s gotta plan!
editor’s note (it’s still Sara talking but now I have my editor hat on): the content before and after this picture make it seem like this woman here is Stanley. She is not. Shes just a woman from the 60s with immaculate vibes. If you actually know who she is, call this number:
1-800-WHO- IS-SHE.
In 1964, Stanley Bard (whose dad used to be the manager #nepobaby) took over the managerial role. He had been a plumber’s assistant at the hotel for almost a decade (10 years & still just the assistant? Damn. Always the plumber’s assistant, never the plumber) and he saw the increase of artist types frequenting the place. He started to work on attracting all types of artists and BOY was that the right thing to do. Stanley was the man and let tenants do pretty much anything they wanted with the apartments as long as it was fair. (ie. residents could combine apartments on the basis of a handshake deal).
(trigger warning: name dropping) The Chelsea Hotel became a symbol of counterculture, serving as the literal background of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Chelsea Girls. The vibes were grungy and immaculate and over the years this place was home for musicians like Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Mick Jagger, and Chet Baker. It was here that Jack Kerouac feverishly typed On the Road, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke dreamed up 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Miloš Forman penned his screenplay for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (supposedly basing the asylum from the play on the wild assortment of artists roaming the floors)
I won’t get too much into it because I have already written too much, but there was so much weird drama around updating the hotel over the last decade. Martin Scorsese produced the 2022 documentary, Dreaming Walls (made by Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier, two Belgian directors) about the remaining residents of the Chelsea. The film spies on the day-to-day activities of the aging, former bohemians with nowhere else to go, and the construction workers in the corridors who speculate that ghosts haunt the vicinity. These old farts lived in an active construction site and they made sure to give the construction workers hell.
Most of the fun facts I could find involve death, (here’s a link if you’re down for spooky stuff) soooo instead of that here are a bunch of pretty pictures of the hotel’s interior. Kind of harsh timing considering I just talked about how the old residents suffered due to the reconstruction of the hotel… but oh well!
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