Celebrity Hotels by Henry Shukman
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How many ways are there to spell “hotel”? At the Chelsea Hotel, New York, according to its neon sign flickering over nighttime 23rd Street there’s “HOEL” (as in hole) and there’s “HEL” as in (hell-hole, presumably). The Chelsea is said to have had a facelift recently, but you could have fooled me. That infamous sign, visible from two blocks away, continues to announce its warning as it has done for decades. Best-Westerners and Ho-Joists would doubtless say the sign is about right, were they ever to wheel their cases cross the threshold. No minibar, no ice, the Chelsea is a hotel where room service means a guy in an apron from the corner deli wordlessly, glancelessly handing over a brown paper bag then delving in his trousers for change, where the only common amenity is a pair of elevators, which for decades have possessed a curious odour all their own, some powerful astringent masking something much less salubrious.
It takes a certain kind of person to appreciate the Chelsea. Part arts-colony, part freak-colony, part rooming-house, part halfway-house, the Chelsea is one of the world’s palaces of dinge. Facelift or no, the hotel still hasn’t risen clear of the tone set by its neighbours, a second-hand guitar store and a fishing-tackle-come-thrift store. The tight little lobby is still full of loiterers who might be past-it rock drummers, slightly overweight, slightly cleaner-cut than in whatever heyday they may once have had, who turn out in fact to be the staff. And “Reception” is still hardly the word for the high-countered roost where these wisecracking Beatle-bobs do their very passable imitation of the vultures in the Jungle Book.
But, for all its foibles, the Chelsea is one of the world’s most famous hotels, one of the very few that could claim to be a celebrity in its own right. What it possesses, like all true greats, is a character all its own. A home for the wayward, the unkempt of body and undisciplined of spirit, the Chelsea is a thoroughbred bohemian. However untogether you may think you are, the Chelsea will outdo you.
Take my room on the eighth floor: a carpet covering less than half the floor, a battered kitchenette, two inexpertly salved scars on the bathroom wall where the towel-rail used to be. On the other hand, some former inmate has left behind a high-brow black-and-white photo on the wall. This is the truly bohemian paradox: chaos and beauty, squalor and exaltation. The stairwell is lined with the daubings and sketchings of those who got behind with their rent.
Thomas Wolfe wrote four of his almighty volumes here. After a good day he was known to cavort in the corridors screaming, “Ten thousand words! I wrote ten thousand words today!” (most of them doubtless axed by his editor). Dylan Thomas couched here in between bouts at the White Horse. A plaque outside declares, “From here Dylan Thomas sallied forth to drink the whisky that killed him” – though whether that refers to the very glass that did in the camel or merely to the Water of Life in general is not clear. Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, O.Henry, Tennessee Williams, Mark Twain, William Burroughs, not to mention Arthur C. Clarke and Bob Dylan – this is surely the very Alternative Academy of American Letters.
There’s a simplicity about a Chelsea room, a kind of warped asceticism, as if the whole building were some monastery gone permanently to seed. Unadulterated indulgence is not exactly approved of here, though it is condoned. (At one time the Tenth Floor was rumoured to have a source of something that attracted a lot of elevator traffic.) But there’s a rigour in the air. The elevators, for example, are dead quiet at nine-thirty in the morning. Some no doubt are sleeping things off but most are already hard at work at easel or desk, making the most of the morning light.
The elevators are where it’s at. On my first ride, a tall silhouette in leather jodhpurs accompanies the doorman and me, leafing through his mail. After the figure gets out, the doorman tells me, under his breath, “That was one half of Julie Plunkett [name disguised], the Famous Romantic Novelist.
“You’re kidding. Julie Plunkett is a guy?”
“She’s two guys. His partner is another tall guy just like him. They’ve been living and working here for twenty years.”
Over half the 400 rooms are long-term. As in lifelong. Check in for a couple of nights or a couple of decades – it’s up to you. Then I run into Hiroya, an eccentric Japanese artist who lives at the Chelsea. Today he’s wearing a rather nice silver-grey YSL suit, rather ruined by hieroglyphics daubed up and down the sleeves.
“Interesting,” I remark, casting a critical eye.
Hiroya’s face lights up. “You like? Art is not for looking at, it’s for wearing. You want I make for you?” He reaches out for my prize black cashmere with paint-stained fingers.
I lurch back into the corner of the elevator. “Maybe another time.”
Trannies, junkies, hippies – just about any types ending in –ies are welcome at the Chelsea, even Kennedies (some of the younger ones), not to mention emigrés. One lunchtime I run into a Soviet artist who has been living at the hotel since he escaped Moscow in 1976. He keeps an apartment on the eighth floor and a studio on the second.
“I commute,” he tells me with a smile. “Every morning I get the six-thirty el down to work on the second floor.”
Stanley Bard has run the hotel for over 40 years. He lives off the lobby in a cluttered office crammed with ancient filing cabinets and all kinds of artwork. Putti frolic on the ceiling in an ancient once-blue sky. To visit him is always soothing – the homey dishevillment of his office-come-boudoir, the mellifluous tones of his voice, his reassuring conviction that he runs the world’s most interesting hotel (which he does).
“You know how we keep it feeling like you’re coming home? It’s the way we fix and maintain the hotel…”
I resist interjection.
“…We create a different kind of atmosphere, one of comfort and serenity. One feels good as he walks in. The Chelsea attracts a nice informal clientele that can feel comfortable in a nice atmosphere,” he explains. “The nouveau riche, they would not be happy here, we couldn’t satisfy them.”
Too right. As the monastery understands the monk, so the Chelsea understands the artist, and few else. We’ll leave the neon half-on for you.