NY's Chelesea Hotel Gets The Vanity Fair Touch
dont wanna go to Chelsea
The Chelsea Hotel has to be one of the most infamous locations. A unasuming place with a history so deep it’s jaw dropping. What sort of mojo was in that joint? Now, as they gut and remodel turning the hotel to condos everyone has something to say. Even swanky glossy magazines like Vanity Fair.
Just think about the joint thats residents have included Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and punk rock love birds, Sid and Nancy. Iconic is an understantement and now fat cat high brows can own a flat in the building. Well after the restorations of course. Rumour has it theres blood in the floorboards. Just kidding but Nancy Spungeon checked in but never checked out.
Vanity Fair is offering a history of the place for those of you who never stepped up and through the narrow vestibule.
“Today the halls of the Chelsea Hotel are salted with dust. The hundreds of paintings that adorned its walls have been locked away in storage. The doors to abandoned apartments are whitewashed and padlocked. Hotel operations ceased in 2011 for the first time in 106 years, and now the few remaining residents roam the echoing corridors like ghosts.
They have watched workers haul out antique moldings, stained glass, even entire walls. Ancient pipes ruptured during renovations, flooding apartments, and neighbors returned home from work to find their front doors sealed in plastic wrap. The Chelsea’s new owners say that the building had fallen into dangerous disrepair, and they are restoring it to its original condition.
Some residents believe that they are being forced out, and that the Chelsea as they know it—and as it was known to residents from Sherwood Anderson and Thomas Wolfe to Sid Vicious and Jasper Johns—will soon vanish before the city’s merchant greed.”
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