Hotel Chelsea
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Chelsea residents from the Warhol scene included Viva, Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn, Edie Sedgwick, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America and Brigid Berlin."--Sholem Stein |
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The Hotel Chelsea is a well-known residence for artists, musicians, and writers in the neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan, New York City. It is located at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Built in 1883, the hotel welcomes guests, but is primarily known for its long-term residents, past and present.
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People who live/have lived at Chelsea
Writers and thinkers
During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many great writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Herbert Huncke, Dylan Thomas, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Robert Hunter, Jack Gantos, Brendan Behan, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Oppenheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bill Landis, Michelle Clifford, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Matthew Richardson, Peggy Biderman, Raymond Foye, and René Ricard. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room at the Chelsea on September 21, 1968.
Actors and film directors
The hotel has been a home to actors and film directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Cyndi Coyne, Mitch Hedberg, Miloš Forman, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Eddie Izzard, Kevin O'Connor, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, Jane Fonda, and Gaby Hoffmann and her mother, the Warhol film star Viva.
Musicians
Much of Hotel Chelsea's history has been colored by the musicians who have resided there. Some of the most prominent names include Pete Doherty, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Virgil Thomson, Dee Dee Ramone of The Ramones, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Richard Hell, Ryan Adams, Jobriath, Rufus Wainwright, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, Leonard Cohen and Anthony Kiedis.
Visual artists
The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Larry Rivers, Jessie Helms, Brett Whiteley, Christo, Arman, Richard Bernstein, Francesco Clemente, Philip Taaffe, Ralph Gibson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Vali Myers, Donald Baechler, Willem De Kooning, [John Dahlberg] and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at Hotel Chelsea. Painter & ethnomusicologist Harry Smith lived and died at the Chelsea in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Cole lived there for 35 years until his death at age 112, the world's oldest living person at that time, in 1988.
Fashion Designers
Charles James: Amongst the ranks of the legendary couturiers of the 20th Century who influenced fashion in the 1940s and 50s -- a man also credited with being America's first couturier. In 1964 he moved into the Chelsea Hotel in New York. James died of Pneumonia at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978.
Warhol Superstars
Hotel Chelsea is often associated with the Andy Warhol Superstars, as he directed The Chelsea Girls (1966), a film about his Factory regulars and their lives at the hotel. Chelsea residents from the Warhol scene included Edie Sedgwick , Viva, Larry Rivers, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America, and Brigid Berlin.
Explorers
Ruth Harkness, an adventuress/naturalist who brought the first live giant panda from China to the U.S. in the 1930s, stayed at the Chelsea Hotel after her return to the States.
