The most iconic hotel in New York - immortalised in countless songs and stories. Haunted by several ghosts. A refuge for the creative. Remembered as the place to be at.

From the moment the hotel opened its doors, it was the home of bohemian artists, who lived viciously and wildly in the victorian building. However with the freedom, it didn’t take long for the Chelsea to become a hub for violence, drug abuse and death.

“The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.”

— Patti Smith

Janis Joplin in the lobby of the Chelsea in 1969.

The Chelsea was designed to be a utopia, literally, an experiment in urban coexistence. Architect Philip Hubert, inspired by the French philosopher Charles Fourier, built the hotel with the intent of it being a new way of communal living in 1884. The people who participated in it’s construction where guaranteed a home, even the plumbers. Whereas the rest of the rooms where given to writers, artists, actors.

Arthur Miller offered a succinct summation of the bohemian ambiance: “No vacuum cleaners, no rules, no shame.” Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while in residence there, and Jack Kerouac pounded out On the Road in his room.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the main characters and stories associated with the legacy of the Chelsea Hotel.

THE LANDLORD DADDY

At the center of the hotel's Bohemian mood was Stanley Bard, the manager, who inherited his job and his passion for the Chelsea from his father, David, who ran the hotel for many years. He earned his nickname for his intimate and generous relationship with his preferred hotel guests. He fostered a sort of artist colony, often letting his tenants, many of whom were down and out or up and coming, put off paying rent for months and even years.

“‘’I don’t ever want the Chelsea to turn into a normal place just in business to make money,’’ he said. ‘’I want to keep the atmosphere kooky but nice, eccentric but beautiful.”

— Stanley Bard

He had a sense of who was really an artist, as well as a sense for rich dilettantes. He himself was a dilettante who wanted to be part of the artistic scene and wanted to be identified with it. So he became the landlord daddy for artists. It was an astonishing role that he created for himself. His relationship with every tenant was personal. That was the way he behaved—he took everything personally.

''There's not another building in the world that caters to this many creative people,'' Stanley Bard said. ''There's some mystique within these walls that helps people produce art.”

THE MURDER OF NANCY SPUNGEN

**Oct. 12, 1978,the body of 20-year-old Nancy Spungen is carried out from the Hotel Chelsea in New York, allegedly stabbed to death by her boyfriend, The Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious.**

Despite its artistic allure, the Chelsea Hotel’s history is marred by darker events. The tragic death of 20 year old Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, remains one of the most infamous episodes. Spungen was found dead in room 100 from a knife wound, seemingly from then hands of her boyfriend. According to his testimonial he woke up from a drug induced nap on October 12th 1978 to find Spungen dead. Apparently he confessed the murder to the police, when he was arrested, however he couldn't remember doing it and many who knew the couple didn't believe he was guilty.

Vicious was charged with murder, but while he was out on bail he died on a heroin overdose. Whatever the truth, Room 100 was demolished and incorporated into another unit to avoid having a pilgrimage spot for the morbidly curious.

Numerous other lives ended prematurely within the Chelsea’s walls. The stories range from the overdose of society lady Almyra Wilcox to the suicide of artist Frank Kavecky.

Patti Smith and Robbert Mapplethorpe on the left, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious on the right

ELEVATOR ROMANCE

Leonard Cohen’s iconic song Chelsea Hotel #2 is based on an explicit night at the Chelsea of course, with none other than Janis Joplin.

They ran into each other in the elevator and he recalls saying to her ‘Are you looking for someone?’ She said ‘Yes, I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.'” Nethertheless he made a move on her - he said: ‘Little lady, you’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson.’ Those were generous times. Even though she knew that I was someone shorter than Kris Kristofferson, she never let on. Great generosity prevailed in those doom decades.”

By the time the elevator jerked to a stop on the fourth floor, it was understood that they would spend the night together. “She wasn’t looking for me, she was looking for Kris Kristofferson; I wasn’t looking for her, I was looking for Brigitte Bardot. But we fell into each other’s arms through some process of elimination.”

Below an excerpt of the lyrics Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel #2:

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

you were talking so brave and so sweet

giving me head on the unmade bed

while the limousines wait in the street.

Those were the reasons and that was New York

we were running for the money and the flesh.”

GHOST WITHOUT A LEFT HAND

In 1922 the New York Times reported on a young woman in her twenties who flung herself out of the window facing 23rd Street and meeting her death on the sidewalk. Before her fatal plunge, she had placed her right hand in the middle of huge industrial scissors used to cut bolts of cloth, closed the scissors and cut off her right hand. The pain was more than she expected – therefore, she threw herself out of the window. Apparently her name was Nadia and she came from a wealthy family who resided in the Chelsea Hotel. However she ran off with her bohemian songwriter boyfriend who ended up slipping into alcoholism and abandoning her and her children.

But Nadia’s self-immolation was understandable. Nadia had grown up in the Hotel Chelsea, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy silk merchant whose family lived in a posh suite of rooms in the Chelsea Hotel. Nadia was an artist, but her plans to pursue her artistic vision was cut short when she met a handsome and rogue dandy songwriter and ran away to get married when both were still in her teens. Within a few years, Nadia’s handsome husband had slipped into alcoholism and she had two young children and her husband to contend with.

Nadia returned to the Chelsea Hotel and pleaded with her wealthy father to return to the Chelsea Hotel, they had nowhere else to go and her husband was of no use at all. Nadia’s father, still enraged that Nadia had left his household to marry a drunken songwriter and then immediately had two children without any means of supporting them, relented. He let Nadia and the family return to the Chelsea Hotel, but there was one condition: Nadia was responsible for all the housework and cleaning, as well as bringing in piece-work sewing to add to the household income, and also had to hand wash her mother’s underthings (a constant activity, since Nadia’s mother was incontinent).

Life became too much to bear for Nadia. She still tried to carve out a few minutes for her art, but it was impossible. Nadia’s hands were becoming ruined from the never-ending housework. Hence, on a moonless night, Nadia cut off her right hand and left her tragic existence.

It is said that on moonless nights Nadia can be seen attempting to get into the hotel again, knocking on the upper floor’s windows desperately.

EXPENSIVE VOMIT

A disgusting anecdote: Art enthusiast and collector once arranged a luncheon at the Chelsea Hotel to introduce the then-unknown Jackson Pollock to wealthy art collectors. However the artist proceeded to get wasted, and threw up all over the dining room floor. Peggy’s sister, Hazel McKinley, then famously suggested that the hotel staff should cut out and preserve the piece of carpet, claiming it would someday be worth millions. They probably regret not listening to her.

Chelsey Hotel Corridors by EMMANUEL DUNAND

THE END OF AN ERA

In 2010 the hotel was put up for sale. The board’s reasoned with the following: says it hopes “a new owner would re-energize and revitalize the Chelsea.”Previously it had been owned and operated for more than 65 years by the same controlling families. TBD Hotels bought the Chelsea in 2016, but faced tenant lawsuits and complications to proceed with the intended renovations. The hotel’s125 guest rooms and 30 hotel suite apartments remain, but have been redesigned by the current owners. They are cited saying: ‘Ultimately we were seduced by the romance of the building and we wanted to restore it, not destroy it,’