Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel

by Sherill Tippins

  1967 Joplin’s income goal for year $100,000 $673,000

  1967 Joplin’s recording contract with Columbia $250,000 $1,680,000

  1969 Room sublet fee for porn films $25 $153

  1969 Patti Smith’s weekly pay $70/week $429/week

  1969 Patti and Robert’s room rent $55/week $337/week

  1969 Isabella Gardner’s rent $325/month $1,990/month

  1972 Clifford Irving’s book advance $765,000 $4,110,000

  1972 Frank Cavestani’s room rent $250/month $1,340/month

  1974 Small Chelsea room, no bath $11/day $50.20/day

  1975 Ramones’ first record contract $6,000 $25,100

  1978 Sid Vicious’s payment for “My Way” $25,000 $86,200

  1978 Vicious’s bond for jail release $50,000 $172,000

  1979 Harry Smith’s grant for Mahagonny $10,000 $31,000

  1993 Transient rooms $85–$250/night $132–$389/night

  1993 Apartments/rentals $900–3,000/month $1,400–$4,670/month

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  The history of the Chelsea is a story of creative collaboration. Likewise, this biography of the Chelsea rests on the scholarly work of hundreds of writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, and historians whose in-depth explorations inform every page. I would like to express my appreciation for the information and insight gleaned from these works in particular: Kenneth D. Ackerman’s Boss Tweed; Jonathan Beecher’s Charles Fourier and Victor Considerant; Victor Bockris’s Warhol; Carol Brightman’s Writing Dangerously; John Brinnin’s Dylan Thomas in America; Burt Chernow’s Christo and Jeanne-Claude; David Herbert Donald’s Look Homeward; Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume One; Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle’s Ruling America; Myra Friedman’s Buried Alive; John Geiger’s Nothing Is True—Everything Is Permitted; Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson’s William Dean Howells; Martin Gottfried’s Arthur Miller; Carl J. Guarneri’s The Utopian Alternative; DeeDee Halleck’s Hand-Held Visions; Elizabeth Hawes’s New York, New York; Will Hermes’s Love Goes to Buildings on Fire; Clinton Heylin’s Revolution in the Air; Lee Hill’s A Grand Guy; Marian Janssen’s Not at All What One Is Used To; John Loughery’s John Sloan; Greil Marcus’s The Old, Weird America; Hilary Masters’s Last Stands; Neil McAleer’s Arthur C. Clarke; Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me; Barry Miles’s In the Seventies; Arthur Miller’s Timebends; Patricia Morrisroe’s Mapplethorpe; Steve Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s Jackson Pollock; Andrew Perchuk and Rani Singh’s Harry Smith; Bennard B. Perlman’s The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies; Larry Rivers’s What Did I Do?; Ed Sanders’s Fug You; Michael Schumacher’s Dharma Lion and There But for Fortune; Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home; Sylvie Simmons’s I’m Your Man; Rani Singh’s Think of the Self Speaking; Larry Sloman’s Steal This Dream; Patti Smith’s Just Kids; Deborah Spungen’s And I Don’t Want to Live This Life; Jean Stein and George Plimpton’s Edie; Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s De Kooning; Anthony Tommasini’s Virgil Thomson; Florence Turner’s At the Chelsea; Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest; and Ed Hamilton and Debbie Martin’s Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea blog.

  I must also thank the indispensable archivists and librarians at the Andy Warhol Museum Archives Collection; the Anthology Film Archives’ archival collections; Columbia University’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library; the Delaware Art Museum Library; the Getty Research Center; the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin; Harvard University’s Houghton Library; the Museum of Modern Art Film Department’s Special Collections; the New York Public Library’s Art and Architecture Collection, Berg Collection of English and American Literature, Billy Rose Theater Division, Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy, and Manuscripts and Archives Division; New York University’s Fales Library and Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives; the Paley Center for Media; the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art; and Yale University’s Music Library.

  I am most grateful to my phalanx of Hotel Chelsea residents, alumni, and other interview subjects, including Romy Ashby; Rita Barros; Sam Bassett; Sally Be; Brian Bothwell; Michael Brown; Gerald Busby; Julia Calfee; Gretchen Carlson; Frank Cavestani; Judith Childs; Sean Costello; Rosebud (Rosemarie) Feliu Pettet; Raymond Foye; Scott Griffin; Peter Hale; Ed Hamilton; Sparkle Hayter; Richard Hell; Gavin Henderson; Eric Horwitz; Corey Johnson; Wayne Kempton; Julius Lester; Kirt Markle; Debbie Martin; Hilary Masters; Jonas Mekas; Paul Millman; Jeremiah Moss; Dominique Nabokov; Robert Nedelkoff; Meli Pennington; Rene Ricard; Clarice Rivers; Mary Anne Rose; Lisa Rosen; Ed Sanders; Cornelia Santomenna; Paul Santomenna; Joan Schenkar; Rani Singh; Patti Smith (and her assistant Andi Ostrowe); Carol Southern; Timothy Sullivan; Philip Taaffe; Sylvia Thompson; Linda Troeller; Fred Waitzkin; Bill Wilson; Coretta Wolford; Michele Zalopany; and especially Stanley and David Bard and Michele Bard Grabell.

  My early readers—Eileen Keller, Geeta Kothari, Dash Mecoy, Jane Tippins, Prudence Tippins, and, especially, Bob Mecoy—were more than generous with their time. Nina Oksman was a brilliant research assistant. Tara Elgin Holley, Sandy Hollis, Vincent Polidoro, Uliana Salerno, Catherine Tice, Nicholas Tippins, Rankin Tippins, Steve Tippins, and Mary Yznaga made the years of writing more pleasurable. My editor, Deanne Urmy, and her assistant, Ashley Gilliam, provided support above and beyond throughout the course of this book’s development, as did Dream Palace’s manuscript editor, Tracy Roe, executive manuscript editor Larry Cooper, art and production supervisor Margaret Anne Miles, and associate general counsel David Eber. Gail Ross of Ross-Yoon Literary Agency saw me through to the end, along with Howard Yoon, Jennifer Manguera, and Anna Sproul. I would also like to thank the New York Times, the Dox Museum in Prague, and the Fourier Society in France for their willingness to publish bits of my research as I assembled this story. I am ever grateful as well for the support I received from the Corporation of Yaddo, the New York Public Library, and the New York Writers Room, all of which provided me with space and creative companionship through years of work.

  Notes

  Abbreviations for frequently cited sources:

  Berg The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library

  CS Cornelia Santomenna archives

  CURBML Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library

  HL Houghton Library, Harvard University

  HRC Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

  JC Judith Childs archives

  NYHS New-York Historical Society Collection

  NYPL New York Public Library

  SAAA Smithsonian Archives of American Art

  INTRODUCTION

  [>] “junkies . . . geniuses”: Vowell, Take the Cannoli, 81.

  [>] “living temple”: David Croly, “The Apartment House from a New Point of View,” Real Estate Record and Guide (April 7, 1883): 136.

  [>] “This saga”: John Sherwood, “A Love Story: Alice of the Chelsea,” Washington Times, October 12, 1983.

  1. The Chelsea Association

  [>] “Look! Look!”: Stallman and Hagemann, New York City Sketches, 107.

  [>] Charles Street police station: “Paula Bobs Up Serenely Again,” New York Times, August 16, 1884.

  [>] from Long Island to the East River: “Paula Locked Up,” New York Times, August 17, 1884.

  [>] “Frances Stevens of Switzerland”: “Paula Bobs Up.”

  [>] “pretty and mysterious”: Ibid.

  [>] “Paula Locked Up”: “Paula Locked Up.”

  [>] homeless for a time: “New York Apartments Little Changed in 30 Years,” New York Times, July 12, 1914.

  [>] “Two Hundred Feet”: “Two Hundred Feet in the Air,” New York Tribune, November 16, 1884.

  [>] “to guard their dearly-cherished”: Hubert, Pirsson, and Hoddick, “New York Flats and French Flats,” Architectural Record 36 (September 1892): 55, CS.

  [>] wine cellar: “Two Hundred Feet.”

  [>]
“christened on the barricades”: “New York Apartments.”

  [>] young technocrats: Beecher, Victor Considerant, 3.

  [>] “stinking, close”: Beecher, Charles Fourier, 34.

  [>] Expanding on Isaac Newton’s theories: Ibid., 108.

  [>] “passionate attraction”: Ibid., 66.

  [>] Fresh from the battles: Beecher, Victor Considerant, 2.

  [>] model phalanstery: Beecher, Charles Fourier, 460.

  [>] Philip soaked up the atmosphere: “New York Apartments.”

  [>] “rich were enticed”: Noyes, American Socialisms, 202.

  [>] “delectable visions”: Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance, 49.

  [>] “skilled mechanic class”: Kirby, Years of Experience, 177.

  [>] journal called the Harbinger: Noyes, American Socialisms, 209.

  [>] “life of practical action”: “New York Apartments.”

  [>] “like cold chocolate sauce”: Brooks, Confident Years, 1.

  [>] the American energy: Beecher, Victor Considerant, 304.

  [>] “with keen intelligence”: G. Matlack Price, “A Pioneer in Apartment House Architecture: Memoir on Philip G. Hubert’s Work,” Architectural Record (July 1914): 76.

  [>] “self-fastening button”: “A Biographical Sketch of Philip Gengembre Hubert,” National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York: J. T. White, 1912), 7.

  [>] planned to make several extended trips: Cornelia Santomenna, e-mail to the author, April 10, 2009.

  [>] grocers and cloth merchants: Brooks, Confident Years, 10.

  [>] former circus roustabout: “Sketch of James Fisk, Jr.,” New York Times, January 7, 1872.

  [>] “I worship”: White, Book of Daniel Drew, 342.

  [>] from fifteen to thirty-five: Ackerman, Boss Tweed, 51.

  [>] to sixty and even ninety: E. J. Edwards, “The Rise and Overthrow of the Tweed Ring,” McClure’s Magazine (July 1895): 143.

  [>] “what had previously”: “More Ring Villainy: Gigantic Frauds in the Rental of Armories,” New York Times, July 8, 1871.

  [>] Pottier and Stymus: “Affidavit, J. H. Ingersoll, People v. Tweed, 1877,” NYHS.

  [>] suppliers of fresco panels: Howe et al., Herter Brothers, 71.

  [>] including the state legislators: “Frauds and Parties,” Harper’s Weekly (August 26, 1871): 786.

  [>] prestigious cabinetmaker: New York City Directory, 1865.

  [>] “seventh son of Mars”: “Marriage of a Seventh Son of Mars,” New York Times, December 22, 1869.

  [>] his Twenty-Third Street purchase: “The Armory Job,” New York Times, July 10, 1871.

  [>] the Excelsior: “A Big Sunday Night Fire, Two Churches Nearly Destroyed,” New York Times, February 18, 1878.

  Caroline Talman: Christopher Gray, “Streetscapes: St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church,” New York Times, April 2, 1989.

  [>] square tower: “More New Buildings,” New York Times, October 4, 1870.

  [>] effect was deliberate: McWilliam, Dreams of Happiness, 67.

  [>] framing an interior space: Hersey, High Victorian Gothic, 4.

  [>] moral resonance: “Stand, Don’t Deliver: A Conversation on Aspects of Architecture,” Straddler (Spring/Summer 2009), http://www.thestraddler.com/200903/piece3.php.

  [>] Star of David: Daniel Schneider, “A Star for All Seasons,” New York Times, October 3, 1999.

  [>] constructed of marble: Ackerman, Boss Tweed, 169.

  [>] work done on Sundays: Ibid., 170; also, New York Times, July 22, 1871.

  [>] $170,000 for chairs: Ackerman, Boss Tweed, 169.

  [>] forty-five million dollars: Ibid., 2.

  [>] the city’s debt: Mandelbaum, Boss Tweed’s New York, 77.

  [>] city couldn’t pay: Ibid., 153.

  [>] mountains of uncollected garbage: “Notes from the People: To the Editor of the New-York Times,” New York Times, August 16, 1871.

  [>] began to come together: “Immense Demonstration Last Evening: Uprising of Citizens Without Distinction of Party,” New York Times, September 5, 1871.

  [>] “the ripest scholars”: George William Curtis, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 38, no. 224 (January 1869): 270.

  [>] “utterly disowned”: Noyes, American Socialisms, 247.

  [>] “at the front”: Ibid., 18.

  [>] “I shall be sorely disappointed”: Greeley, Recollections, 157.

  [>] “Improve the physical conditions”: Manufacturer and Builder 3, no. 5 (May 1871): 106.

  [>] “Home Club Associations”: Hubert, Pirsson, and Co., Hubert Home Club Associations (brochure, circa 1881): 8.

  [>] families of “congenial tastes”: “All About Home Clubs,” Real Estate Record and Guide (December 30, 1882): 147.

  [>] cost only $4,000: New York Times, February 16, 1881.

  [>] “merely by working”: Beecher, Charles Fourier, 174.

  [>] besieged by demands: New York Times, February 16, 1881.

  [>] Jared B. Flagg: Christopher Gray, “Streetscapes: 121 Madison Avenue; Designed as a Co-Op and Dating to 1883,” New York Times, January 13, 1991.

  [>] eleven-room apartments: Hubert, Pirsson, and Co., Hubert Home Club Associations, 8.

  [>] the Hawthorne: Cornelia Santomenna, e-mail to the author, August 2, 2006.

  [>] steam-heated bedsteads: Hawes, New York, New York, 56.

  [>] “Versailles of cooperatives”: Ibid., 61.

  [>] Eight palatial ten-story buildings: Hubert, Pirsson, and Co., Central Park Apartments (brochure, November 1881), 3.

  [>] space for entertaining: Christopher Gray, “When Spain Reigned on Central Park South,” New York Times, June 17, 2007.

  [>] “the enlargement of home”: Hawes, New York, New York, 55.

  [>] “sheep lined up”: Morris, The Tycoons, 61.

  [>] “did not approve”: Steve Shapin, “Man with a Plan,” New Yorker (August 13, 2007): 75.

  [>] “earnestly protest against”: Hubert, Pirsson, and Co., Hubert Home Club Associations, 8.

  [>] “socially the most interesting”: Mariana G. Van Rensselaer, “Fifth Avenue, with Pictures by Hassam,” Century (November 1893): 15.

  [>] “wholesome amusement”: Craig Morrison, “Before the Great White Way,” Educational Program of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York, October 24, 2006.

  [>] boy was “square”: “Ingersoll’s Flight,” New York Times, October 30, 1871.

  [>] “To me, that little”: “Tools of the Ring,” New York Times, October 10, 1871.

  [>] restitution to the city: “Reviving Ring Memories,” New York Times, December 23, 1881.

  [>] Excelsior burned down: “A Big Sunday Night Fire: Two Churches Nearly Destroyed,” New York Times, February 18, 1878.

  [>] refused to speak English: Emilie McCreery, “The French Architect of the Allegheny City Hall,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 14 (July 1931): 241.

  [>] cabinetmaker received $175,000: “Conveyances, 222 West 23rd Street, Moses E. and Marie L. Ingersoll to the Chelsea,” New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register, January 8, 1883.

  [>] he remained a silent partner: Testimony of defendant John Graham Hyatt and Elizabeth Waters, Pottier & Stymus Manufacturing Co. and Alonzo Follett, Plaintiffs, v. John Graham Hyatt [etc.], Supreme Court, City and County of New York, June 26, 1882.

  [>] 175 feet wide: New York Daily Tribune, November 16, 1884.

  [>] as wide as the Brook Farm: Noyes, American Socialisms, 554.

  [>] eighty apartments: Beecher, Charles Fourier, 241.

  [>] Fifty would be occupied: Philip Hubert, The Chelsea: Home Club Apartments (1884), 14, CS.

  [>] ground-floor shops: “Two Hundred Feet.”

  [>] seven-eighths of the members: Fourier, Selections from the Works, 142.

  [>] George Moore Smith: “Account of Chelsea, George M. Smith, Builder,” Real Estate Record and Guide (January 20, 1883).

  [>] “intimate knowled
ge”: Hubert, The Chelsea, 14, CS.

  [>] wooden beams in the lobby: David G. Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea,” New York Sun, September 13, 1930.

  [>] scholars and artists: McWilliam, Dreams of Happiness, 235.

  [>] Henry E. Abbey: Christopher Gray, “Streetscapes: The Chelsea Hotel at 222 West 23rd Street,” New York Times, February 15, 1998.

  [>] the actress Annie Russell: Baral, Turn West on 23rd, 78.

  [>] a “regency”: Beecher, Charles Fourier, 253.

  [>] Louis Harrington: Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea.”

  [>] a range of apartment sizes: Hubert, The Chelsea, 14–15, CS.

  [>] cost from $7,000: Gray, “Streetscapes: The Chelsea Hotel.”

  [>] rentals from $41.67 to $250: Hubert, The Chelsea, 14–15, CS.

  [>] owners and renters: Ibid.

  [>] alternating rhythms: Carl J. Guarneri, “Reconstructing the Antebellum Communitarian Movement: Oneida and Fourierism,” Journal of the Early Republic 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 483.

  [>] public street: Hubert, Pirsson, and Co., Hubert Home Club Associations, 8.

  [>] separate houses: Hubert, Pirsson, and Hoddick, “New York Flats,” 59.

  [>] From the beginning: “Among Theatrical Folks: The New Lyceum School and Its Managers,” New York Times, July 31, 1884.

  [>] amateur writers and performers: “The New Lyceum,” New York Daily Tribune, June 1, 1884.

  [>] the artists’ job: McWilliam, Dreams of Happiness, 235.

  [>] whose beloved wife: Cornelia Santomenna, e-mail to the author, February 16, 2007.

  [>] dark red carpet: “The Lyceum Theatre,” New York Daily Tribune, March 30, 1885.

  [>] Steele MacKaye: “Founder of Two Theatres,” New York Times, February 26, 1894.

  [>] In midsummer: F. H. Sargent to Philip Hubert, July 21, 1884, CS.

  [>] goal was to create: “The New Lyceum,” New York Daily Tribune, June 1, 1884.

  [>] a special ability: Diana Strazdes, “The Millionaire’s Palace: Leland Stanford’s Commission for Pottier & Stymus in San Francisco,” Winterthur Portfolio 36, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 213–43.