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

by Sherill Tippins

  [>] custom-designed apartments: “Two Hundred Feet.”

  [>] the crown imperial: Pellarin, Life of Charles Fourier, 212.

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

  [>] “build tremendous stairs”: Ibid.

  [>] “Refused”: Phillips’ Elite Directory, W. Phillips & Company, 1887, 1888, NYHS.

  2. The Coast Of Bohemia

  [>] a great variety of ways: W. D. Howells to William C. Howells, April 29, 1888, Howells Collection, HL.

  [>] “ten stories high”: Ibid.

  [>] Bronson Howard: David G. Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea,” New York Sun, September 13, 1930.

  [>] Gustave’s wife, Marie: Cornelia Santomenna, e-mail to the author, February 24, 2009.

  [>] imported French chef: Hawes, New York, New York, 61.

  [>] Mrs. Blake: “Chelsea Association,” New York City Census (1890), NYPL.

  [>] William Damon: Brunner, Ocean at Home, 71.

  [>] John Ellis: “Chelsea Association,” New York City Census (1890), NYPL.

  [>] machine lubricant Valvoline: “A History of Innovation: Valvoline,” Construction Week Online (May 31, 2011); http://www.construction weekonline.com/article-12605-a-history-of-innovation-valvoline/#.ZZKUkqp21w.

  [>] William Tilden, dissolute heir: “Settling William Tilden’s Estate,” New York Times, October 17, 1883.

  [>] Clemens had been ducking in and out: Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks.

  [>] city leaders’ decision: Hawes, New York, New York, 65.

  [>] create a utopian community: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 15–16.

  [>] Elinor’s mother had been implicated: Ibid., 62.

  [>] “unwed mothers”: Allen, Solitary Singer, 262.

  [>] self-righteously rejected: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 57.

  [>] “friend of cab drivers”: Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, 100. 100.

  [>] warm, gentle handshake: William Dean Howells, “First Impressions of Literary New York,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (June 1895): 65. (June 1895): 65.

  [>] “confounded literary telescope”: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 147.

  [>] “plump and with ease”: Ibid., 193.

  [>] “mysterious prejudices”: Ibid., 207.

  [>] as a business: Howells, Literature and Life, 76.

  [>] “hire one half”: William Grimes, “Looking Back in Anger at the Gilded Age’s Excesses,” New York Times, April 18, 2007.

  [>] “Hi! Ho!”: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1105.

  [>] backer, Philip Hubert: Ibid., 1107.

  [>] took a research trip: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 288.

  [>] for their political opinions: William Dean Howells to Editor, New York Tribune, November 12, 1877.

  [>] not James Lowell: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 281.

  [>] a curt reminder: Ibid.

  [>] “share the labor”: Ibid., 286.

  “seeing that I’m”: Ibid.

  [>] “very humbly and simply”: Howells, Life in Letters, 403–4.

  [>] “most beautiful”: Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes, 143.

  [>] “It was better”: Ibid., 66.

  [>] Reverend George Hepworth: Ward, George H. Hepworth, 237.

  [>] philanthropist J. Sanford Saltus: “The Social World,” New York Times, November 2, 1894.

  [>] Laura Sedgwick Collins: “To the Lyceum School Alumni,” New York Dramatic Mirror, July 25, 1892.

  [>] fondness for visual artists: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 240.

  [>] Dewey, a gregarious landscape painter: David Adams Cleveland, “Charles Melville Dewey: A Forgotten Master of Classic Tonalism,” Antiques (November 2009).

  [>] weekly dinner parties: Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea.”

  [>] John Francis Murphy: Hudson River Museum, J. Francis Murphy, 9.

  [>] Rehn, the wealthy son: “F.K.M. Rehn, Artist, Dies,” New York Times, July 8, 1914.

  [>] vast, richly adorned: Howells, Coast of Bohemia, 126.

  [>] Chatting enthusiastically: Emerson C. Kelly, “J. F. Murphy: Tints of a Vanished Past” (unpublished manuscript), Emerson C. Kelly/J. Francis Murphy Collection, roll no. 4341, SAAA.

  [>] frescoing their tenement walls: Howells, The Coast of Bohemia, 208.

  [>] more of their attention: Brooks, John Sloan, 79.

  [>] “small dressmakers”: Brooks, Confident Years, 8.

  [>] odd assortment: Ibid., 7.

  [>] reviewed for Harper’s: W. D. Howells, “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s Monthly (June 1888): 154–55.

  [>] “Surely I had never”: Bellamy, Looking Backward, 25.

  [>] “allegorical romance”: Howells, “Editor’s Study,” 154.

  [>] gentlemen and beggars: McCabe, New York by Gaslight, 153.

  [>] “the seats were very insecure”: Bellamy, Looking Backward, 7.

  [>] “dose of undiluted socialism”: Howells, “Editor’s Study,” 154.

  [>] respectable brownstone: William Dean Howells to William C. Howells, September 29, 1888, HL.

  [>] “higher prices”: Fraser and Gerstle, Ruling America, 161.

  [>] “The responsibility upon us”: Joseph Schiffman, “Mutual Indebtedness: Unpublished Letters of Edward Bellamy to William Dean Howells,” Harvard Library Bulletin 12 (Autumn 1958): 363–74.

  [>] “to lie”: “Mr. Howells on Realism,” New York Tribune, July 10, 1887.

  [>] “more in earnest”: William Dean Howells to Miss Florence M. Carter, August 8, 1911, HL.

  [>] deep-toned paintings: Kelly, “J. F. Murphy.”

  [>] Edward Eggleston’s daughter: Ibid.

  [>] Bruce Crane: Ibid.

  [>] Charles Naegele: Ibid.

  [>] John Straiton: “To Irrigate Arid Lands,” New York Times, May 13, 1893.

  [>] Ritter sisters: “Conveyances, 222 West 23rd Street: The Chelsea Leases to Ida P. Ritter,” New York City Department of Finance, Office of the Register, May 29, 1896.

  [>] Charles G. Wilson: Ibid.

  [>] Nineteenth Century Club: “Daniel G. Thompson Dead,” New York Times, July 11, 1897.

  [>] Childe Hassam, an acquaintance: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 226.

  [>] Chelsea’s apartment-studios: Weinberg, Childe Hassam, 87.

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

  [>] Founded by Jeanette Meyers Thurber: Tibbetts, Dvořák, 53.

  [>] African-American and disabled: Ibid., 57.

  [>] among those chosen: Karen A. Shaffer and Anya Laurence, “Jeannette Thurber, National Conservatory of Music Founder,” Maud Powell Signature 2, no. 1 (April 1997).

  [>] “voice of the people”: Tibbetts, Dvořák, 113.

  [>] “the American voice”: Ibid., 361.

  [>] “The negro in America”: “Real Value of Negro Melodies; Dvorak Finds in Them the Basis for an American School of Music,” New York Sunday Herald, May 12, 1893.

  [>] “That is as great”: Tibbetts, Dvořák, 131.

  [>] “literally saturated himself”: Ibid.

  [>] Williams Arms Fisher: Ibid., 132.

  [>] “We have not begun”: “In Whitelaw Reid’s Honor,” New York Times, April 10, 1892.

  [>] a million-dollar “Spectatorium”: “Steele MacKaye: Theatrical Innovator,” New York Times, October 30, 1927.

  [>] power of the arts: Brooks, Confident Years, 144.

  [>] apartment on West Fifty-Ninth: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 338.

  [>] to three-fourths: Brooks, Confident Years, 120.

  [>] “green shoots”: Ibid., 18.

  [>] “a vague, high faith”: Howells, The Coast of Bohemia, 108.

  [>] “where I live”: Ibid., 127.

  [>] “eight or ten steps”: Ibid., 128.

  [>] “hoped to be saved”: Ib
id., 3.

  [>] “quaint old rookery”: Ibid., 105–6.

  [>] “Congratulate yourselves”: Davis, Badge of Courage, 74.

  [>] “behaving ungratefully”: W. D. Howells to William C. Howells, April 12, 1892, William Dean Howells Collection, HL.

  [>] writer Hamlin Garland: Wertheim and Sorrentino, Crane Log, 85.

  [>] “little creed of art”: Davis, Badge of Courage, 82.

  [>] reading of Zola: Wertheim and Sorrentino, Crane Log, 75.

  [>] view of the Blackwell’s Island: Ibid., 81.

  [>] arrested for vagrancy: Davis, Badge of Courage, 57.

  [>] “dust-stained walls”: Crane, Great Short Works, 145.

  [>] “the drunk, so familiar”: Ibid., 142.

  [>] reading it conspicuously: Davis, Badge of Courage, 59.

  [>] “No one would see it”: Ibid., 60.

  [>] “something like an anachronism”: Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes, 266.

  [>] invited Crane to tea: Wertheim and Sorrentino, Crane Log, 62.

  [>] “high intellectual revels”: Sorrentino, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 153.

  [>] “stooping like a race”: Crane, Best Short Stories, 111.

  [>] “wrapped to the chin”: Howells, Literature and Life, 127.

  [>] “live!”: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 327.

  [>] unheated top-floor loft: Sloan, John Sloan’s New York Scene, 68–69.

  [>] 165 West Twenty-Third: Davis, Badge of Courage, 130.

  [>] “it must be interesting”: Brooks, Confident Years, 139.

  [>] began to wonder: S. Dennis, “The World of Chance: Howell’s Hawthornian Self-Parody,” American Literature (May 1980): 279–93.

  [>] “their private railway-cars”: Brooks, The Confident Years, 72.

  [>] “wicked, wanton”: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 339.

  [>] “I am an anti-imperialist”: “Mark Twain Home, an Anti-Imperialist,” New York Herald, October 15, 1900.

  [>] “court-intrigues in imaginary countries”: Goodman and Dawson, William Dean Howells, 342.

  [>] “hideousness of carnage”: “‘Ready’ for War,” Nation 66, no. 1708 (March 24, 1898): 218.

  [>] newly impoverished widow: “Mrs. Origen Vandenburg [sic] Arrested,” New York Times, February 23, 1894.

  [>] Buddington, a retired physician: “Handcuffed, Then Struck,” New York Times, November 25, 1892.

  [>] Campbell was elected to the U.S. House: “Death of Andrew J. Campbell,” New York Times, December 7, 1894.

  [>] trading their artwork: Kelly, “J. F. Murphy.”

  [>] “filled with people”: Crane, Great Short Works, 176.

  [>] “an endless crowd”: Ibid.

  [>] “electric lights, whirring”: Ibid., 181.

  [>] “atmosphere of pleasure”: Ibid., 182.

  [>] “into darker blocks”: Ibid., 183.

  [>] “small coin”: Brooks, America’s Coming-of-Age, 118.

  3. Four Saints In Three Acts

  [>] late-October: Donald, Look Homeward, 426.

  [>] Chelsea to work: Francis X. Clines, “About New York: The Chelsea Is Still a Roof for Creative Heads,” New York Times, February 4, 1978.

  [>] Rumors had circulated: Donald, Look Homeward, 376–77.

  [>] cut in half: Ibid., 296–97.

  [>] decades past the apex: E. L. Masters, Across Spoon River, vii.

  [>] “damn pigeon-holers”: Brooks, John Sloan, 211.

  [>] editor became more difficult: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 92–93.

  [>] “For Christ’s sake!”: Richard R. Lingeman, “Where Home Is Where It Is,” New York Times Book Review, December 24, 1967.

  [>] Spoon River and its aftermath: Brooks, John Sloan, 60.

  [>] to take the hide: Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again, 313.

  [>] “one of the great”: Donald, Look Homeward, 444.

  [>] receding hairline: Ibid., 364.

  [>] “My voice may be funny”: George Davis, “Theatre,” Decision (June 1941): 21.

  [>] Isadora Duncan: “The Dowager of Twenty-Third Street,” Cue (March 8, 1952).

  [>] Chelsea Association: “Old Chelsea Changes on Former Ekford Farm,” New York Times, November 14, 1920.

  [>] a former maid’s chamber: Hotel Chelsea brochure (1905), and “Handy Guide to New York City” (advertisement), Rand McNally, 1909.

  [>] Miss Almyra Wilcox: “Woman Dies in Hotel, Took Drug for Sleep,” New York Times, February 3, 1908.

  [>] artist Frank Kavecky: “Robbed of His Funds, Treasurer a Suicide,” New York Times, October 26, 1909.

  [>] Titanic disaster: “Women Work Hard for Rescued Folk,” New York Times, April 21, 1912.

  [>] “The night grows gray”: S. F. Kneeland, Random Reveries of a Busy Barrister, 13–14.

  [>] Association members: “Encumbrances,” 222 West 23rd Street, Block 00772, Lot 0064, New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register, October 11, 1922.

  [>] yellowed leases: David G. Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea,” New York Sun, September 13, 1930.

  [>] Knott Corporation: Evening Mail, March 19, 1921, NYHS.

  [>] the Earle, the Judson: “James Knott, Founder of the Knott System,” New York Hotel Record, September 11, 1906, NYHS.

  [>] pet-shop monkey: “Lion Bites, Monkey Fights, Rat Runs,” New York Times, August 17, 1922.

  [>] Greenwich Village–based empire: Bareuther, “The Hotel Chelsea.”

  [>] jury-rigged kitchenettes: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 37.

  [>] flowered wallpaper: Stanley Bard, interview with the author, November 30, 2007.

  [>] roller-skated through the lobby: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 41.

  [>] the lobby spittoon: Ibid., 35.

  series of murals: “Political Murals Rouse Controversy,” New York Times, November 23, 1934, Hotel Collection, NYHS.

  [>] “calculated to poison”: E. L. Masters, Across Spoon River, 410.

  [>] Clarence Darrow: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 13.

  [>] “as solitary”: Brooks, Confident Years, 9.

  [>] a switchboard operator: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 88.

  [>] ailanthus trees: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 3.

  [>] living out of steamer trunks: Ibid., 101–2.

  [>] “posh bohemian”: Lingeman, “Where Home Is Where It Is.”

  [>] create the life: Brooks, Early Years, 179.

  [>] “the most peaceful”: E. L. Masters, Across Spoon River, 397.

  [>] wife, Ellen, objected: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 35.

  [>] wisecracking elevator operator: Hardin Wallace Masters, Edgar Lee Masters, 47.

  [>] bedbug infestations: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 35, 41.

  [>] flashing green eyes: Ibid., 15.

  [>] click of her high heels: Ibid., 101.

  [>] “God-a-Mighty”: Donald, Look Homeward, 249.

  [>] west end of the eighth floor: Cathleen Miller, “Chelsea Moaning: In NYC, Bunk with the Ghosts of America’s Greatest Drunks, Dreamers and Other Artists,” Washington Post, January 24, 1999.

  [>] “as big as a skating rink”: Donald, Look Homeward, 426.

  [>] spacious bathroom with its toilet: Turner, At the Chelsea, 7.

  [>] $34.67 per week: Donald, Look Homeward, 426.

  [>] the rumors: Ibid., 351.

  [>] Perkins’s failure to offer: Ibid., 406.

  [>] “October Fair”: Ibid., 393.

  [>] the fascinating diversity: Ibid., 347.

  [>] give it up: Ibid., 351.

  [>] “The Vision of Spangler’s Paul”: Ibid., 378–79.

  [>] would have to resign: Ibid., 382.

  [>] “great creative energy”: Bruccoli and Bucker, To Loot My Life Clean, 244.

  [>] fled to Germany: Donald, Look Homeward, 384.

  [>] “I am going to write”: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 587.

  [>] ten-thousand-dollar advance: Donald, Look Homeward, 424.
/>
  [>] crate full of manuscripts: Nowell, The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, 739.

  [>] “horror of our self-betrayal”: Donald, Look Homeward, 438.

  [>] “He might have called”: E. L. Masters, Mark Twain, 250.

  [>] “with a clown’s reward”: Ibid., 251.

  [>] One friend at the Chelsea: Brooks, John Sloan, 199.

  [>] urged the young illustrators: Ibid., 20.

  [>] what they felt: Ibid., 19.

  [>] Henry George, Edward Bellamy: Ibid.

  [>] Henri moved to New York: Loughery, John Sloan, 48.

  [>] Dolly Wall: Ibid., 49–50.

  [>] fell in love with the city: Brooks, John Sloan, 41.

  [>] a portrait of the Chelsea: Loughery, John Sloan, 84.

  [>] 165 West Twenty-Third Street: Sloan, John Sloan’s New York Scene, 8.

  [>] he remained largely ignorant: Brooks, John Sloan, 18.

  [>] series of art exhibitions: Ibid., 71.

  [>] the Eight: Sloan, John Sloan’s New York Scene, 4.

  [>] “apostles of ugliness”: Brooks, John Sloan, 226.

  [>] “Sloan’s socialist painting”: Charles Wisner Barrell, “New York Life,” Craftsman (February 1909): 65.

  [>] subjecting his friends: Brooks, John Sloan, 87.

  [>] the Socialist Party: Loughery, John Sloan, 154.

  [>] becoming art director: Ibid., 177.

  [>] “all the variety”: Brooks, The Confident Years, 486.

  [>] had drawn Dolly out: Loughery, John Sloan, 164.

  [>] the dramatic panache: Ibid., 172.

  [>] dinners with the activists: Ibid., 169.

  [>] offer from David Belasco: Flynn, The Rebel Girl, 64.

  [>] “You’ll get the pie”: IWW, The Little Red Song Book, 15.

  [>] Sloan came to love: Brooks, John Sloan, 223.

  [>] dietary fads: Loughery, John Sloan, 327.

  [>] the Victrola: Hilary Masters, Last Stands, 32.

  [>] “an amphora”: Ibid., xi.

  [>] “have not been off Manhattan”: Edgar Lee Masters to unidentified recipient, correspondence fragment, HRC.

  [>] make it illegal: Brooks, John Sloan, 208.

  [>] “Pageant of the Paterson Strike”: Loughery, John Sloan, 194.

  [>] “The Mills Alive”: Green, New York 1913, 201.

  [>] “some of the most stupidly ugly”: Perlman, Lives, Loves, and Art, 231.

  [>] an engaged artistic life: Brooks, John Sloan, 135.