You can’t miss the Chelsea Hotel, even if there isn’t a huge sign above the entrance that says The Chelsea Hotel. Architecturally, it’s unmistakable, a red-brick structure dominating West 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, looming large against the bright sky.
It is also perhaps the most famous hotel in New York. For most of the 20th century, Chelsea was the epitome of bohemian glamor: a resting place for artists, musicians, writers, actors and poets: Mark Twain, Mary McCarthy, Thomas Wolfe, Dvorak, Sam Shepherd, Dennis Hopper, Allen Ginsberg, Sam Shepherd, Jimi Hendrix, Ethan Hawke, Patty Smith, Dee Dee Ramone. Gore Vidal and Jack Kerouac stayed one night here, each signing their real names in the visitors’ book and assuring the clerk that the registry would one day become famous. Arthur Miller wrote After the Fall is here, Bob Dylan wrote Blonde on Blonde, and Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. Eddie Sedgwick lit the fire, and Jackson Pollock was thrown to the mat.
Tragedy has been witnessed, too: Here, Dylan Thomas allegedly spoke his famous last words, “I’ve got eighteen straight whiskeys—I think that’s the record,” before slipping into a coma from which he never woke. Also here, 20-year-old Nancy Spungen was found stabbed to death in October 1978. Her partner, Mr. Vicious, died four months later of a heroin overdose, bailing for her murder.
Despite this history, Chelsea finally needed a little love. Its edgy glamor feels right out in 21st-century Manhattan of yoga classes and green smoothies, where hotel visitors care more about broadband speed and gym access than Jimi Hendrix does here. Its future seemed uncertain until it was taken over by the real estate group, who renovated it and reopened it as a hotel that respected its heritage while keeping pace with the new generation, both creatives and those attracted by the hotel’s reputation.
On my way to check in, I noticed a very cool looking man at the door. He had long hair, orange glasses, and the terse air of someone who knew his way around a building. Musician by night, employee by day, I later find out, keeps Chelsea’s spirit alive. He visited her for the first time in 1996, when he moved to New York.
“I’m the only guy old enough to have stayed here before,” he laughed. “I grew up in rural Oklahoma. It was recent off the farm, and it was an early order of business to visit Chelsea because it was associated with a lot of literature and music in my area of interest.” Today he does the rounds for guests, telling tales of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. “It still excites and inspires me. There is a habit—not just in New York—to get rid of these buildings, and the culture is affected when that happens. I was relieved when the new ownership took over, because I had assumed it would pass away.”
Built between 1883 and 1885, the hotel is a Victorian Gothic stack of 250 rooms, 12 stories high. It was one of the first large apartment complexes in the city, but became an apartment hotel after the turn of the century. Although it had been a haven for generations of art visitors, it fell into disrepair—familiar course—until 1947, when art-loving David Bard took it over. Thanks to him, and his son Stanley, who took over after his father’s death in 1964 and ran it for 40 years until he was forced out in a power struggle, the hotel has maintained its reputation as innovators. While he could be nurturing, Stanley was also a weirdo.
As Joseph O’Neill, the Booker’s shortlisted novelist who lived in Chelsea for 10 years from 1998, says: “When I moved to the USA, I had no credit history and couldn’t rent an apartment, so I went to Chelsea. It wasn’t my type. Who worries about that. If you are interested in it, for whatever reason, it will be a good fit for you. But the community is what made it such a great place to live.
“It was a very neoliberal moment when I moved in, during the dot-com boom,” he adds. “The hotel felt like one of the last fragments of New York that was a little rough and wilder.”
Stanley Bard died in 2017, at the age of 82, and was described in his obituary in The New York Times as “the Robin Hood of innkeepers.” By then, the hotel had been under new ownership for several years, and renovations, which took over a decade, were in progress, room by room.
Chelsea Hotel still looks more like an apartment building than a hotel, with symmetrical appeal, all tiled floors, copper and wrought iron. The lobby is decorated with abstract artwork. Behind the check-in desk, keys await on fringed key rings in a net. The grand staircase behind the reception desk, leading to the rooms, has been opened up, while the lifts have their old buttons. The bedrooms feel solid and built to last—my room was large enough that I felt I could live in it without too much trouble—but were updated to the expectations of the modern traveler, from the soundbar to the inviting bed space.
Downstairs, the hotel’s old Spanish restaurant, El Quijote, has been restored and has been joined by another restaurant, Cafe Chelsea. The bar quickly became a destination in itself, a collection of rooms where a scenic crowd would meet for cocktails. By the end of the year there will be a spa and gym. Reasons to visit beyond history. The Chelsea Hotel is conveniently located, a short walk from Penn Station, for easy access to the airport, and roughly equidistant between Central Park and downtown.
Any restoration like this raises the question of whether the charm has been retained: what Arthur Miller described as “a spooky, upbeat mess” combined with “the feel of a huge, old-fashioned family and boarding house”. Most of the hotel’s long-time residents, who O’Neill said were his soul, are gone, though a few remain. No longer ruled by the eccentric Bards, Chelsea receives guests on a more traditional basis, with rates starting at around $300 (£235) a night.
But for Benton, at least, the Chelsea spirit is very much alive.
“That’s always the question,” he says. But the history of New York is constantly changing. When I came in the ’90s everyone told me I missed the party, but now I’m told I’ve been there for exciting times. I’m not a fan of ghosts and woo-woo, but it’s important to me to have a tangible connection to this music, art, and literature that interests me. This building is that.
After three nights enjoying its atmosphere – and a few martinis at the bar – it wasn’t hard to agree.
Necessities
Ed has been a guest at the Chelsea Hotel (001 212 483 1010; hotelchelsea.com) which offers double from $300 (£235)