A place of the people…
Artist Andy Warhol made a film in Hotel Chelsea, which he title Chelsea Girls.
Link to part of film: http://youtu.be/MpSiRIUC4pc
Arthur Miller wrote “The Chelsea Affect” after living in the hotel for six years following his breakup with Marilyn Monroe.
Others also wrote stories about The Chelsea, but really the rooms tell stories of their own…
For example, room number 205 tells the story of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas being wild and going into a fatal coma after having 18 whiskies in a row – though it was later confirmed that he died of pneumonia.
Room number 211 tells of where Bob Dylan wrote songs, like room number 614 where Arthur Miller wrote his work.
And the infamous room number 100 tells the story of Sid Vicious, bass player of the Sex Pistols, and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, including when on the morning of October 12, 1978, Nancy was found stabbed to death in the bathroom.
Her body being carried out:
People had both high and low times at The Chelsea. While Jimi Hendrix played his guitar and got high, Dee Dee Ramone, bass player of the Ramones, stayed in his room for two weeks and got low trying to quit drugs.
Plus, when Dee Dee finally got sober and stepped out of the front entrance of the hotel a woman landed right by him after jumping from the ninth floor. Though whether people had a good or bad experience there, The Chelsea definitely provided a place for freedom and creativity.
For instance, Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road in The Chelsea.
Madonna lived there in the 1980s, returning for a photo shoot to be in her book, Sex, in room number 822.
Many individuals expressed themselves in a myriad of ways at the Chelsea, from painting pictures to playing music to writing almost everything like novels and scripts. Among these men and women there was Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Frida Kahlo, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Jane Fonda, Jackson Pollock, and Patti Smith.
It became more and more popular with the 1950s beat generation, the 1960s hippies, and the 1970s and 1980s rock musicians. The Hotel Chelsea is for all kinds of people though. From conservative to creative, they have all been there. Nevertheless, most people have been artists. This could be seen inside the lobby, which was like an art gallery – suiting the neighborhood of Chelsea today, which has a lot of art galleries. And while the lobby was always a lobby, when the hotel used to be an apartment complex, the manager’s office used to be someone’s home. The interesting atmosphere and dynamics of the building made the hotel what it is currently.
