CHELSEA HOTEL

Punks, poets, painters, dropouts, drug fiends, drag queens - all have been welcome at the Chelsea hotel. Andy Warhol filmed there, Arthur Miller wrote there and Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin there, going on to write a song about New York's most beloved hotel.But long-term tenants of the Chelsea - witnesses to a colourful history of fires, murders and suicides - believe it is in danger of losing its bohemian soul. They have launched numerous lawsuits against the hotel's owners because they fear eviction. And the new manager they blame for enforcing the crackdown is British....The 12-storey, 250-room Chelsea hotel was among the tallest buildings in New York when it was built in 1883. It became a residential hotel in 1905 and a celebrated retreat for musicians, painters and men of letters, including Mark Twain, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams. In one room, Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, and in another Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can't Go Home Again. Dylan Thomas drank 18 glasses of whisky in a row in his room before falling into a coma and dying in a nearby hospital. Andy Warhol's muse Edie Sedgwick set fire to hers.

The Guardian
Nov 30 2008