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| The Hotel Chelsea on 23rd St.
Nico singing Chelsea Girls at the Chelsea Hotel:
Nico sings Chelsea Girls in the Chelsea |
The legendary Hotel Chelsea, a NYC landmark, first opened in 1884 as a coop apartment building, not becoming a hotel until 1905. Its long and colorful history as a home to writers, artists, and musicians earned the hotel a place on the National Register of Historic Places. It was also used as housing for survivors of the Titanic. There have been several deaths and suicides within the hotel, and many people have claimed to see ghosts during their stay. It is the place: where Sid stabbed Nancy to death (allegedly); where Janis Joplin gave Leonard Cohen head on an unmade bed; where Dylan Thomas died from alcoholism; where Bob Dylan stayed up for days writing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for his first wife Sara; where Andy Warhol filmed Edie Sedgwick and others in his Factory crew in the flick Chelsea Girls; where William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch; where Betsy Johnson created her first designs; where Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso hung out doing beatniky things; where Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Patti Smith rocked out; where Thomas Wolfe declared You Can't Go Home Again; where Mark Twain, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams wrote; where Arthur C. Clarke penned the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey; where Clarke wrote the screenplay for the film with director Stanley Kubrick; where Madonna shot photos for her infamous book Sex; where all of these people and countless more artists consumed mass amounts of drugs and engaged in mass debauchery. The Hotel Chelsea has inspired and/or been featured in hundreds of songs, books, films, poems, paintings, fashion lines, etc... The creative minds that have inhabited these walls have left the Hotel Chelsea with an indelible bohemian reputation. Is there any other hotel in the world with a status so iconic? Or with a motto so apposite as "a rest stop for rare individuals?"
What's your favorite work inspired by the Hotel Chelsea?
"And clenching your fist for the ones like us/ Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty/ You fixed yourself, you said, Well never mind / We are ugly but we have the music" --Leonard Cohen, Chelsea Hotel #2
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