Are you helping, are you hurting? “Someone sprayed on the site fence in front of Chelsea, the famous Manhattan hotel where Bob Dylan stayed for days to write” Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands “. The facade of the hotel is as you know it from pictures: dark red, downstairs a small guitar shop, a closed restaurant.
The entrance to the lobby is barricaded. You can only enter the building through the former servants’ entrance. He is guarded by security guards. “You can only come in if you live here. Do you have friends here? No? No chance,” it says. The entrance leads to an elevator that spits people out with suspicious looks. A few of the old tenants still live in the middle of the construction site, around 50 to 100 people. One hears irregularly about a dispute with the new owners. It is difficult to find out more.
If you make it to Chelsea, you get the impression of a war zone. People are skeptical and tired. “Stay right behind me,” says a former resident. “I’ll lead you down from the 13th floor. Make up your own mind.” The walls are covered with plasterboard. Cables hang from the ceiling. Now and then a resident looks out of the room. Footsteps echo in the empty hallways. Taking photos is difficult because of the procedures – both sides fear pictures could be used against them. Some fear that it will harm them to speak to journalists. On each floor there are plans that show which rooms are still occupied.
“A normal person checked in and met Allen Ginsberg in the elevator.”
These rooms are world famous. In room 205, Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin tied up in the elevator, while Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed Nancy Spungen in room 100. Madonna lived in room 822 during her first few months in NY. Andy Warhol filmed “Chelsea Girls” here with Nico and Edie Sedgwick. Since Mark Twain’s visit, the Chelsea has not only been inspiration and home, but also a biotope – a haven for some of the most important artists and world stars of two generations.
It has been renovated since 2007, it is said, in order to convert it into a luxury hotel. In reality, however, it is in such bad shape that its future is almost hopeless. Why is a place where world cultural history has taken place in the middle of Manhattan on the verge of destruction? If you are looking for people who can provide information, after a few harsh rejections you come across Scott Griffin.
Scott Griffin lived in Chelsea for 18 years; when he got to New York it took him on. He now lives in the Carlyle, where he receives in his suite. He’s a tall man wearing a pink suit. Even though it’s 30 degrees outside, it’s cool in the suite. Griffin offers water and nuts. “The Chelsea?” He asks, “How much time do you have?” He seems like his brain is always connecting threads and facts to find solutions to impossible problems. Since moving out of the Chelsea Hotel, he has been spending three hours a week with conservationists, lawyers, and district people trying to save the hotel.
“The situation there is so bad that I am seriously concerned that someone might die.” He shows a video from the top floor. Masses of water are held back by a tarpaulin, where it does not hold, the water rushes into the house like from a shower. “I hate to say that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me there was a fire in Chelsea and the building burned down completely.”
“There is no gas in the entire building, so no one can cook. Air conditioning and heating do not work at all,” says Griffin. “The elevators are often broken. The building has no adequate emergency exits, so in the event of a fire, many people cannot even get out alive the building. Windows fall out of their frames and are replaced by Plexiglas panes. ” The rooms where Jack Kerouac wrote “On The Road” are sealed. 75 percent of the hotel is empty, in the other 25 the tenants are waiting, sometimes without running water, without heating and increasingly without hope.
“The first thing to remember is that the Chelsea Hotel as we imagine it was created by the Bard family, especially hotelier Stanley Bard,” says Scott Griffin. Its strategy was geared towards the value of the brand. “That was long before people knew what a brand was. There were permanent residents who created a certain cultural climate, and hotel guests. A normal person checked in and met Allen Ginsberg in the elevator. That was an everyday situation. It was a special ecosystem that worked for some magical reason. ” So it came about that Kerouac, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith stayed there and worked there. Which made the hotel world famous. Despite being a millionaire, Bard ran the day-to-day business himself.
Chelsea carried this concept for many years. In the mid-2000s, after September 11th and before the recession, the New York real estate market escalated. Most of the hotel was owned by the Bard family, but the non-Bard family shareholders in Chelsea realized that their hotel made money but did not make any of them wealthy. And that it was worth millions of dollars by now.
“When I think of Chelsea, I always think of the ‘Lord of the Rings’,” explains Griffin: “It’s like the ring. Everyone who sees Chelsea begins to dream. That they will make a fortune, that their happiness is guaranteed, as soon as they only own the Chelsea. But just like in the movies, only one wearer can wear the ring. “
The apartment of the painter Philip Taaffe still has the original chandeliers
In 2007, the minority owners forced the Bards to sell as majority owners after a legal battle. Joseph Chetrit, who also owns the Sony building on Madison Avenue, bought it well above market value for $ 78 million with a building value of 55 million or less. “After buying the building, he fired all the janitors, engineers, all the employees to break the unions,” said Griffin. There were Pottier and Stymus mantelpieces in Chelsea, some worth up to $ 200,000. “Chetrit just tore her out and threw her on the street. He even split her in two sometimes just to make sure no one saved her.”
Chetrit also had pipes ripped out, a large part of the electrical system removed and the building’s heating system disabled. Then he sold the building to Ed Scheetz. He found that the building had been destroyed during the renovation. So he resold it to BD Hotels. Griffin: “The preservation of historic monuments in New York only applies to the exterior of buildings at the moment. We had to watch the Waldorf Astoria and the Plaza Hotel essentially being wiped out. Precisely because the legislation does not extend to the interior.”
So BD Hotels has a very expensive building that they cannot repair. There are also legal disputes with residents and the authorities. Saving Chelsea would now cost $ 250 million, Griffin estimates, on top of the selling price. Even the mahogany doors in Chelsea were thrown in the trash – where a former resident who was homeless at the time found them, took them away and, years later, put them up for auction in 2018 at the request of an auction house. Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s door brought in $ 100,000. The new owners threatened to sue the homeless seller. They agreed.
—A space where something new can be created: the hall of the Chelsea Hotel in New York.
(Photo: Mauritius images / Martin Thomas)
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One of the few remaining doors is hidden behind a tarpaulin. It is an entrance to another world. The apartment of the painter Philip Taaffe is the best preserved, still has the original wooden structure and the original chandeliers. Entering it feels like walking into another age. Each room has a different color, the dining room is orange, the living room is light blue. The wooden floor crunches with every step. Wooden blinds, a fireplace. On the walls there are photos and works of art that were created in those rooms.
“Most important to me is to talk about the importance of what Stanley Bard did. I live in great – not fear – grief because this man’s enormous contribution to the cultural history of the United States is disappearing,” says Griffin: “On my travels I meet people who either stayed at Chelsea for just one night or who lived there for decades. Very famous people and people you’ve never heard of. And they all ask: How is Stanley?”
Stanley Bard died in 2017. But the Chelsea Hotel should not die, because it is more than a hotel, but rather a Temporary Autonomous Zone according to Hakim Bey – a space in which normal authorities and laws do not apply for a certain period of time and new things can arise as a result. The loss of such places kills a city – because it can no longer keep its promise of freedom.
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