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'I can still hear the sound of the Methodist bells,
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through
Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel
Writing Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you' - 'Sara' by Bob Dylan (1975)
I've always had a love affair with the future and the Chelsea Hotel, let's face it, is not about the future. It is a victim of its own fame. I was quite frankly frightened by the heroin allure. It was so Oriental in its darkness that New York became a suburb of San Francisco. If Edgar Allan Poe was a building he would look like the Chelsea Hotel. It stands like a piece from The Magnificent Ambersons , the Orson Welles masterpiece, overgrown and growling on 23rd St between 7th and 8th Ave in New York. The outside wall has a Landmark Commission plaque on it, which immediately loses its value when the inhabitants are left out.
Bob Dylan got married during his three-year stay in the Chelsea Hotel from 1961-64, and his first child Jesse was born there. After first arriving at the hotel in 1963, Viva (who went on to become an Andy Warhol superstar) gave birth to both Gaby and Alexander and married both her husbands during the 25 years she lived there. Leonard Cohen, however, preferred to write 'Chelsea Hotel No 2', a song commemorating fellatio with Janis Joplin in room 104, when he lived there in the 1970s. Patti Smith first stayed there in 1959, and in 1962-63 returned with a penurious Robert Mapplethorpe who could not persuade the owner Stanley Bard that his photography made an equitable exchange for rent. Stanley let them stay anyway. Joni Mitchell had 'Chelsea Morning'. BonJovi had 'Chelsea Midnight' and Nico and Andy Warhol had Chelsea Girls .
Stanley Bard has been at the helm of the Chelsea Hotel for more than 40 years, since taking it over from his father David in 1957. The building was the first co-oped building in New York, having been built, complete with features such as artist studios, in 1882. It became a hotel in 1905, ended in bankruptcy, and rescued from the bank by a group led by David Bard in 1940. Now featuring 400...