The Hotel Chelsea: From Victorian Cooperative to Artists’ Landmark

The red-brick facade and iron balconies of the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street

Photograph by Epicgenius, cropped from the original, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Hotel Chelsea is the best-known address in New York for writers, painters and musicians, but it began as something more ordinary and more unusual at the same time: a cooperative apartment house, finished in 1884, during the city's first luxury apartment boom.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission says the building went up in 1883 and was designed by Hubert, Pirsson & Co. Christopher Gray of The New York Times wrote in 1998 that it was completed in 1884 and that city records do not clearly say who conceived it. The building application was filed in the name of George M. Smith, a building-materials dealer. The New York Tribune said "some 50 people of means" organized the project. The idea is often credited to Philip Hubert, a French-born architect, and the Historic Districts Council says Hubert was influenced by the thinker Charles Fourier's ideas of communal association.

Portrait of the architect Philip Hubert, about 1885 — Philip Hubert, in a photograph taken about 1885. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Gray reports that the original building had a barbershop, a restaurant, artists' studios on the top floor, a roof garden, maid service and about 100 apartments, 70 owned by stockholders and 30 rented. Many were taken by tradesmen and suppliers on the project, who accepted apartments instead of cash. Hubert moved in himself in 1885.

The lobby of the Hotel Chelsea with artwork on the walls and a chandelier

The lobby, with artwork on the walls. Photograph by Nickvud, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The commission's 1966 report calls it one of the few remaining Victorian Gothic apartment houses in the city. It singles out the tiers of horizontal iron balconies, decorated with leaves and flowers, and a central tower-like section with a pyramidal slate roof. It says the building has some of the first fireproofed wrought-iron beams, some of the first duplex apartments in New York, one of the first penthouses, and was an early cooperative. The report calls it eleven stories. The Historic Districts Council counts twelve.

The experiment did not last. The Historic Districts Council says Hubert's venture went bankrupt in 1905 and the building became a hotel. That is when it began to draw guests such as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Sarah Bernhardt, according to the council. The commission's report lists Twain and the painter John Sloan among its residents, along with Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Flaherty and Eugene O'Neill.

Portrait of Mark Twain, 1907 — Mark Twain, 1907. Photograph by A. F. Bradley, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Portrait of the painter John Sloan by Robert Henri, 1909 — John Sloan, portrait by Robert Henri, 1909. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1929 New York Times advertisement for Hotel Chelsea, 'Modern Living in Old Chelsea' — A Hotel Chelsea advertisement in The New York Times, October 24, 1929. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The hotel's long run as an artists' address came after World War II, the council says, when falling room prices drew Jackson Pollock, Virgil Thomson, Larry Rivers, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams and Jack Kerouac. The council also says Arthur Miller moved into Room 614 after his divorce from Marilyn Monroe, that Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick wrote the 2001: A Space Odyssey screenplay there, and that Andy Warhol filmed Chelsea Girls in it. It credits the manager Stanley Bard, who ran the hotel from 1957 to 2007, with creating its artists' colony, and says Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen wrote some of their best-known songs there during the 1960s. The Times reported in 1998 that Bard was starting a multimillion-dollar facade repair.

The commission designated the hotel a landmark in 1966. The hearing drew eight witnesses in favor, including one of the hotel's owners, and none against. The Historic Districts Council says it is also on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

Who owns the Hotel Chelsea today?

Ownership has changed hands often since Bard's departure. CityLand reported that the Chetrit Group bought the property in 2011 and won Landmarks approval in April 2012 for facade work and a rooftop addition over opposition from residents and neighbors. The Real Deal reported that a group led by BD Hotels' Richard Born and Ira Drukier and the hotelier Sean MacPherson bought the building for $250 million in October 2016, through an entity called SIR Chelsea LLC, and that BD would develop and manage it. The same outlet reported that the hotel partly reopened in March 2022 after an 11-year absence from the hospitality market. The sources used here do not include a current deed, so this article reports the last buyers they describe, not the current title holder.

The Hotel Chelsea: From Victorian Cooperative to Artists’ Landmark

Who owns the Hotel Chelsea today?

Sources