Inside the Chelsea
The Beginning of the End of an Era
Face it: New York is a city desperately in need of more drugstores, Jamba Juice franchises, hastily constructed office towers, condos and banks. To that end, do we really need more (or even one) landmark hotel where artists and eccentrics perpetually occupy rooms worth hundreds of dollars a night while paying a mere fraction of that? Walk down 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, and you just might hear faint echoes of smug laughter from bottom line bean counters who recently deposed the long-time
maverick proprietor of The Chelsea Hotel. It was a definitive shift that marked the end of an era - like the Hell’s Angels beating the crap out of hippies at Altamont; or Nixon’s resignation; or the recent cancellation of Gilmore Girls. Fortunately, you’ll always be able to relive the glory days of The Chelsea through music, film and literature created on its premises. But, in the words of This is Spinal Tap director Marty DiBergie, "Don’t look for it. It’s not there anymore." Although current management encourages you to visit, starry-eyed creative types are ill advised to pin their hopes on (as so many have before) showing up for the night and staying on for years.
Origins and Icons
In 1884, the Chelsea Hotel was NYC’s first co-operative apartment complex and, at the time, the city’s tallest building. In 1903, the bankrupt co-op was sold and became the Hotel Chelsea in 1905. In 1940, the Baird family began their management reign. The building was given New York City landmark status in 1966, and is also a National landmark.
A partial list of its bohemian residents and frequent visitors reads like a who’s who of 60s/70s pop/counter culture: Sir Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001 at the Chelsea), William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen, beat poet Gregory Corso, Quentin Crisp, Robert Crumb, Bob Dylan, dancer/choreographer Katherine Dunham (who brought in lions as part of a Metropolitan Opera rehearsal), Jane Fonda, Milos Forman, Jimi Hendrix, Dennis Hopper, Janis Joplin, Robert Mapplethorpe (who lived at the Chelsea with Patti Smith in the 70s), Arthur Miller, Joni Mitchell, Edith Piaf, Dee Dee Ramone, Edie Sedgwick, Sam Shepard, Dylan Thomas, composer Virgil Thompson, Sid Vicious, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, and Thomas Wolfe (in the spirit of fairness, this list was culled from the hotel’s own web site; which, despite the recent change in management, has continued unabated as a time capsule of its cultural legacy).
Residing at the Whim of Stanley Bard
Native Texan and Yale graduate Gerald Busby made his professional debut as a composer with a commission from Paul Taylor for the ballet RUNES (which has received more than one thousand performances since its 1975 Paris premiere). He composed the score for the 1977 Robert Altman film 3 Women and collaborated extensively with playwright Craig Lucas. Now 71, Busby has been a Chelsea Hotel resident for the past thirty years. As for how he secured his permanent residence, Busby recalls: "I had just finished acting in Robert Altman’s A Wedding in Chicago. I was visiting Virgil Thomson, my mentor who I’ve known since 1969. He had one of the original apartments. I said ’Virgil, I would like to live here.’ He picked up the phone and called Stanley and said this is the kind of person you’re supposed to have here. A recommendation from Virgil was very conclusive. . .In the fall of 1977, I moved to 1016, just above Virgil’s bedroom."
Busby is referring to 73 year-old Stanley Bard, the recently deposed manager. Back then, the hotel "was dominated by his personality. He was charming, outrageous, crazy, conniving; but he was fun. . .You first had to ingratiate yourself to him. The first year he’d give a lease and then after that he wouldn’t renew it. . .It was a very kind of personal way of running a hotel. The two categories that were eligible for his patronage and attention were artists and people who were black sheep from rich families. He had an acute instinct for all the things an artist goes through. When my partner died of AIDS and I kind of fell apart and got behind in my rent, he was very supportive and said in so many words that if I could pay the rent on time and get on my feet I could stay the rest of my life.
Writer Ed Hamilton and his wife Debbie created and maintain Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog. "Debbie and I have lived at the Chelsea for twelve years. Prior to that we lived in Washington, DC, where I taught Philosophy and attended graduate school. We had dreamed of living in the Chelsea; so when we finally decided to move to New York, Debbie went to talk to Stanley and, unfortunately, he said there were no rooms available. Luckily, we saw an ad for a sublet in the newspaper, and it turned out to be in the Chelsea. After a year of living in the sublet-tiny, but dirt cheap-Stanley gave us our own room, primarily because he hates the idea of sublets. . . He ran this place like a wild west hotel. . . Say what you will about him, Stanley was the architect of this visionary experiment."
That experiment ended this past summer, when business-minded Chelsea board members initiated a change (some would say coup) by unceremoniously ousting Bard and installing BD Hotels L.L.C. as the new management. Bard, whose family holds a majority of shares, was trumped by other board members as a result of a recently resolved arbitration dispute. Busby explains: "Well about a year ago, the other members of his corporation sued Stanley for inefficiency. And in terms of pure business terms, he was not running it properly. What they saw was dollar signs as this area gentrified. They managed somehow to gain control and oust him. They walked in one day and said ’Stanley, get out.’ It’s never been said publicly, but their object is to get rid of us who have low rent and start making real money. There’s no question that big changes are coming - but the new management inherited a labyrinth of Stanley’s off the cuff maneuverings. They got a can of worms they hadn’t counted on."
Fortunately, Busby has "a cracker jack lawyer" and is relatively confident that he and others are on firm legal ground in their efforts to continue, unabated, as legal residents. But from the attitude at the front desk to behind-the-scenes maneuvering, changes permitted by the letter of the law have started, with no end game in sight. Hamilton notes: "Due to the landmarking, BD Management won’t be permitted to do anything that will change the outside of the building. Unfortunately, the interior is not landmarked, so BD can do almost anything they want in inside, including partitioning such historic rooms as the Grand Ballroom, which they have already done. We’re worried about them renovating the lobby to make it more current or hip, about the ceiling mural in Stanley’s office, and also about the cast iron staircase, which they have been allowing to deteriorate."
The Bad Old Days
Last week saw the demise of two genuine institutions from NYC’s good old bad days. Coney Island amusement park Astroland closed its gates for good, as did Times Square XXX Palace the Playpen. At the same time, a New York 1 poll said that more than a third of respondents think life in the city is worse now than it was fifteen years ago (according to those making less than $100,000 a year). Could it be the forgiving gauze of nostalgia, or is it possible that more and more people are realizing the price of economic progress means a permanent loss of the seedy, eccentric character that made NYC a mecca for the brilliant, troubled, misunderstood and insane--who in turn fueled the economy with art, theater and music?
Looking back on the NYC of the 70s, Busby recalls: "When I moved in, it was still rather dismal. Eighth Avenue was grim and peppered with little Latino cafes, the most famous of which was called Asia de Cuba, where you could eat dinner for three or four dollars. The West Street leather bars were in full swing. Hamilton, who moved to NYC in 1995, notes "the city was much grittier and working class than it is these days, especially the Chelsea neighborhood, which was filled with normal people and inexpensive places to shop and eat. The place was falling apart, but in a grandly seedy way. There were cheap florescent lights in the hallways, and worn checkerboard linoleum covered the floor. The hotel was little more than a divinely inspired flophouse, with schizophrenics and prostitutes roaming that halls and junkies shooting up in the bathroom, while morbid punks burned candles before the door of Sid Vicious’s old room and Dee Dee Ramone challenged construction workers to a knife fight ... It was hard for us to get into our shared bathroom because there was always a junkie shooting up in there (we found out later that this was due to the fact that it was Beat writer and Times Square hustler Herbert Huncke’s former bathroom, and so the junkies still considered it their property).
Next: Gentrification hits the Chelsea
