Bohemian Haven

The Renaissance of the Chelsea Hotel: An Icon Returns

Large-scale remodeling can go badly wrong, especially when it’s a building that has its own character. Very often, it is precisely the interplay of perceived shortcomings that gives a historic building its charm. So in the summer of 2011, when the Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street in Manhattan closed for renovation for the first time in its long history, and guests and residents alike were forced to make room for construction workers, it felt like an era was coming to an end. Old New York, as many lamented, would soon be gone forever. It was in the process of being refurbished to death, the rock ‘n’ roll disappearing beneath a luxury veneer. Developers, many agreed, would end up ruining the idiosyncratic nature of the building and destroying a unique biotope that had evolved over many decades.

“I had no concept of what life at the Chelsea Hotel would be like when we checked in, but I soon realized it was a tremendous stroke of luck to end up there.” - Patti Smith

After all, the Chelsea was so much more than a hotel. It embodied an attitude toward life, was a refuge, creative and just a bit crazy – and stood 12 stories high in an enormous historic building dating back to 1884. It was a place that attracted like-minded people, mavericks and geniuses and even one or two ghosts.

The list of people who lived at the Chelsea reads like a Who’s Who of popular culture. It included Bob Dylan, Julian Schnabel and Stanley Kubrick as well as Ethan Hawke and Andy Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick, who set her room on fire by mistake. It’s where William S. Burroughs wrote “Naked Lunch” and Jack Kerouac “On the Road.” Many people stayed for months or years, others stayed for decades.

Arthur Miller moved into the Chelsea in 1961 after he and Marilyn Monroe divorced. The playwright once described how just stepping into the elevator immediately got you high because of the thick haze of marihuana smoke you encountered. Sid Vicious, the bassist for the Sex Pistols, was charged with stabbing and killing his sleeping girlfriend Nancy Spungen in room 100 while high on heroin. Leonard Cohen immortalized the hotel and the memorable night he spent there with Janis Joplin in one of his best songs: “... Giving me head on the unmade bed while the limousines wait in the street …”

Over the decades, many of those who were drawn to New York by the promise of fame used the Chelsea as their first port of call because the rules here were different. Even the name of the hotel breaks with convention. The famous neon sign high up on the facade quite clearly says on it Hotel Chelsea, but residents and New Yorkers alike call it the Chelsea Hotel or simply the Chelsea.

Once renovation plans were in place, this hotel with its improvisational talent became the ultimate symbol of gentrification. The scaffolding went up against the old red-brick exterior and what happened next was entirely unexpected. Nothing. For nearly ten years there was no progress whatsoever. Investors pulled out, new owners came and went, disputes with the city were carried out concerning building permits, dozens of residents sued for the right to stay in their apartments, and in the end, there was no construction, just a huge construction site. The Chelsea fell into a waking coma and as far as anyone could see, this is how it would stay.

Two years ago in the summer, the unexpected happened again, and the hotel reopened. In a remarkable sleight of hand, it had been renovated from top to bottom but appeared to have hardly changed at all. The Chelsea had remained true to itself, just freshened up a bit. It now has Instagram and TikTok accounts, and influencers frequent the French café. The worn out sofas and dubious wiring were replaced, as were the gurgling radiators. But the red and white striped awning is there on the sidewalk like it always was, the wroughtiron balconies have been preserved and the legendary Spanish restaurant El Quijote has been given a second lease of life. It will be celebrating it’s 100th anniversary in just a few years’ time.

Old Charm, New Leadership

The team behind the Hotel Chelsea, which had previously demonstrated what it means to create a hotel with soul at both The Jane and The Bowery hotels, is a trio of hoteliers: Sean MacPherson, Ira Drukier and Richard Born. All three must have a diplomatic knack too, because 40 of the Chelsea’s longterm residents agreed to put the past behind them and stay on without making a fuss.

The new owners have also memorialized long-time manager and former part-owner Stanley Bard, who went to Florida to retire and died there in 2017 at the age of 82, by naming a magnificent ballroom after him. Bard took over the management from his father in 1964, and he was the man who allowed the eccentric artists’ colony to develop and decided who got a room and who did not. Those who couldn’t afford the rent were allowed to pay for their room with paintings. These works of art have meanwhile grown into a formidable collection. The quality varies, but even the more amateurish attempts have found their way back into the new Chelsea Hotel. Some of them hang in the renovated lobby where they help to make it look even less like every other luxury hotel worldwide. The cool vibe also hasn’t changed, perhaps it’s even gotten more intense, but giant sofas still invite guests to sit down and engage in conversations that will change the world.

What’s gone are the broken and destructive elements that the Chelsea was previously unable to shake off. Guests now have a rooftop spa to look forward to – a wonderfully peaceful place to relax. On their website, the new owners explain that they define the hotel by its history, of course, but also “by it’s ever-evolving, unmistakable otherness. Solid and sumptuous, eccentric yet beautiful, the Chelsea is a world unto itself: a decadent palace of peculiarity.”