The Chelsea Hotel

The Chelsea Hotel is one of New York City's landmarks for good reason. It's served as housing for bohemian creatives and addicts, and been through several iterations over its history, from divey residential to high-end hotel. Learn all about this legendary place today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 0:12Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, um, the super cool edition. Another, another addition in our ongoing New York saga to explain every single building or theme or trend in the entire city of New York.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  I feel like these are always me, so I'm sorry if I'm foisting these.

• 0:37Josh Clark?

  Well, you love New York.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  I do. You know, the T-shirt told me to.

• 0:43Josh Clark?

  Oh, I thought it was I heart New York. Is that what that means?

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:48Josh Clark?

  I get it now.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  But it's I heart New York. It didn't say you heart New York. I took it all wrong. But now I'm, I love that city, so I want to know more about it.

• 0:57Josh Clark?

  It is a very cool city and this is a cool, um, place.

• 1:03Josh Clark?

  In the city's history, for a long part of the city's history, actually, the Chelsea Hotel, which little known fact, is actually supposed to be called the Hotel Chelsea. And I could not find where, who first turned it around because surely it was a poet or a singer or something, a writer. Um, but at some point it got basically transversed, even though the official name is and always has been, since it was a hotel, the Hotel Chelsea.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it can be a little confusing. Uh, same place though, so, uh, don't sweat it. So you can say either one, but.

• 1:37Josh Clark?

  Wait, wait, wait. You want to talk confusing? There's a Marriott Renaissance Chelsea Hotel.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:45Josh Clark?

  In the same neighborhood. I, I mean, I could see myself accidentally booking that and being like, this place is a little more put together than I expected.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Chelsea is a neighborhood and every hotel in there is a Hotel Chelsea.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Or a Chelsea Hotel, rather.

• 2:01Josh Clark?

  Uh, I love Chelsea. I think that is one of my favorite neighborhoods in New York, if not my favorite. We stayed there a bunch of times when we went and visited New York.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  And Chelsea, yeah, I like it as well. And I have stayed at the Hotel Chelsea a couple of times.

• 2:16Josh Clark?

  I have two, uh, but

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but that actually answers a question that I had. I was trying to figure out where you came up with this as a topic. I would have guessed the Taylor Swift song, um, The Tortured Poets Department.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  Cause she mentions it in, in there. That's, I guess, not where, that's not what inspired you to do this?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  No. Bob Dylan, if anybody.

• 2:41Josh Clark?

  I got you.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  No, I mean, uh, from staying there semi recently, uh, and that's the great thing about our job. It was like, yeah, I wish I knew a little bit more about this place.

• 2:50Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  And, uh, here we are.

• 2:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. What'd you think of it?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  The hotel?

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Well, you know, as, as you'll learn, if you don't know, the Chelsea Hotel was, uh, renovated over the course of many, many, many years after being closed, uh, for those renovations. We'll get into all the ins and outs of that. Um, but I, I thought that it was a top notch renovation that, uh, from what I've read, even though it's a, it's a fancy, uh, fancy pants place now, um, everything I've read says that they did a very tasteful, uh, job. In fact, let me read, in fact, so I'm not just talking out of my butt. Uh, but one of the, uh, people in the New Yorker or something that wrote about it said, "It presents itself subtly and doesn't scream, 'I've changed,' uh, due largely to the fact that the building was landmarked in 1977.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  So many elements such as its facade and famous stairwell cannot be changed in accordance with its landmark status. Uh, current owners instead have worked with it and around its physical history, uh, and the enhancements are fitting."

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  A hundred and fifty-eight rooms in fifteen room categories, uh, from two hundred square feet to seventeen hundred square feet. Uh, and there you go.

• 4:04Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, and that's great that they did a good job with it because people all the way back to the 1940s, um, with Edgar Lee Masters, the poet, author of Spoon River Anthology, who lived there for a while, was worried about the, the, the gist of the Chelsea Hotel being stripped away by new owners. And it's changed hands a few times, but it's also stayed in really capable hands for decades. And those capable hands as we'll see helped give the Chelsea Hotel its, uh, its own, like, its very famous vibe.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I should also say too that a lot of people I'm sure think it's an abomination. And a lot of times these are the same people that were like, you know, Times Square was better or New York was better when it was a dirtbag city crumbling. And you were as likely to get mugged, walking the streets or spray painted on if you stood still for too long as anything else.

• 5:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so based on what we'll learn about what went on at the Chelsea Hotel, I think it's very telling how dangerous New York was at the time, that almost to a person, when they interviewed residents years later, they say that they felt safe in the Chelsea Hotel. And the Chelsea Hotel was as crazy as a place could get, and yet it just goes to show you how much more dangerous it was outside of the Chelsea Hotel in New York at the time.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seemed to have a very familial quality to it.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  And for good reason. So let's, let's jump back to the beginning when it was built. First of all, it's right there at West 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood. And it started in 1884 as the Chelsea Association Building. Nuts and bolts, it is a 12-story building, was one of the taller buildings in New York at the time. It is Victorian Gothic. It is a beautiful gorgeous building if you look at it from across the street. It's just one of, one of New York's greatest landmarks, designed by architect Philip, is it Hubert or Hubert?

• 6:05Josh Clark?

  I'm going to say Hubert, that's what I would say.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  All right, we'll go with that. And Hubert designed it on the philosophy of a French philosopher that he was a fan of, named Charles, what is it?

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  I think Fourier.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Fourier, who was a utopian socialist and kind of thought this concept of a co-op of a community should work in co-ops called fallings.

• 6:28Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  And that's what the Chelsea started out as, was one of the first housing co-ops in New York City where if you live in a co-op, then you own a share of that building along with all the other owners. And you also are responsible for the monies that help maintain and keep up that building.

• 6:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's all fun and games until you need a new roof.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  So Hubert actually followed Fourier's vision and turned the Chelsea into not just a co-op, but an attempted socialist utopian paradise where it wasn't just for the wealthy. It was, I think, I don't know if you said or not, it was one of the tallest buildings in New York at the time. So it was a very tony address when the building opened. And yet, he set apartments aside for some of the people who had built the building, like some of the electricians, if there was such a thing at the time, some of the plumbers, some of the carpenters, like they had shares. They were able to live in this co-op because there was room made for them.

• 7:29Josh Clark?

  And there was also room made for artists and musicians and writers. And the point was for everybody to kind of rely on one another. So if you needed plumbing help, you could pay your plumber in, you know, a painting or something like that, if your plumber would accept it. Everybody was meant to depend on everyone else and be kind of self-sufficient as a unit.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, not so big into abstract, but yeah, sure.

• 7:56Josh Clark?

  I guess.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Are you going places?

• 7:59Josh Clark?

  Right. When are you going to die?

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. There are also in that very first iteration, and this is very key, you mentioned artists, but there were, the top floor had 15 artist studios up there. And that really kind of carried on throughout the history of the Chelsea until most recently.

• 8:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  That version of the Chelsea was around for about 21 years. It went bankrupt in 1905. Some of those residents stuck around and then the rest became a hotel. And the Chelsea for decades functioned as a place where you could stay there as a hotel. You could stay there for a month, you could stay there for a week, like weekly and monthly rates, or you could be a resident and live there. It's a very unique situation.

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so the rooms also apparently were fairly cheap, especially for a luxury place, a luxury building. So if you were an up and coming or starving artist, you could still probably afford a place there. And because it was created to house artists and talent of all different kinds, it was automatically attractive. It was, it just kind of became a place where art was created, not just a place where artists could live. There was a longtime Chelsea resident named Harry Smith, who I saw described as the archetypal bohemian trickster figure. And he's just Chelsea Hotel through and through, from what

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  I could tell. He said that the hotel exuded atmospheric vibrations that attracted artists and also helped produce great art. So like, the building itself and the vibe that was in it led to better art than maybe would have otherwise been produced. At least according to Harry Smith, who was a trickster, apparently, so he might have been lying.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  And also, you know, the human brain works in funny ways. And once a place gets a reputation, is that you go in there. And that in itself, you may think you're being inspired just by being there. And that ends up inspiring you. You know what I mean?

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think some people, though, I'm not going to name names, but I think over time, some artists who stayed there have wanted to kind of capture what that hotel does and maybe bit off a little more than they could chew.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  I think I know who you're talking about.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  I think you should second, have a second thought or two. If you're like, I'm going to make an ode to the Chelsea Hotel, where there's a song, a movie, doesn't matter.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I know exactly what you're talking about. We're not talking about O. Henry, though, who stayed there a lot, or Mark Twain, who stayed there a lot, or Sarah Bernhardt, who stayed there when she came to New York to perform.

• 10:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Those were all like frequent guests in those early years. They were, they were artists, you know, very famous artists at the time, occupying those, those artist studios on the top floor. From the very beginning, they even

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Held some Titanic survivors in 1912. That's where they went when they were, when they were brought in, shivering in the cold.

• 10:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is pretty cool that they opened their doors to them. I'm sure other hotels did too, but I thought that was neat.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:04Josh Clark?

  And we should say these artists that were staying here, O. Henry was hiding from creditors.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  When he stayed there. John French Sloan, he was a member of the Ash Can School of Art, which made its name by showing some of the grittier, more dismal side of New York life, which is totally contrary to the zeitgeist. And so the artists were avant garde. Basically throughout the entire history of the Chelsea Hotel, the artists working there were like the vanguard of the avant garde.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like Bohemian, you'll hear those words thrown out a lot when the Chelsea Hotel is described and or its tendency over the years.

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  They were Czechoslovakian to a person.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Right. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Thomas Wolfe was a frequenter there. In fact, he died. He spent the last years of his life there in room 829, writing things like, "You can't go home again." And he died very young, though, from tuberculosis at the age of 37 and was known to kind of, you know, pace the halls, looking for inspiration or that next paragraph or sentence.

• 12:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw that somebody said he ran out into the street one night at like 3 a.m. and shouted that he'd written 10,000 words in one day.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 12:24Josh Clark?

  That's pretty substantial. And Thomas Wolfe, also not to be confused with Tom Wolfe.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  He was an influence in his own right. He influenced the Beats mainly through Jack Kerouac. He influenced the new journalists. So ironically, Thomas Wolfe influenced Tom Wolfe.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:42Josh Clark?

  And in fact, there's a story that Fear and Loathing, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and at the Kentucky Derby, that Hunter Thompson took that from a Thomas Wolfe story.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 12:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  That's pretty cool. We still haven't done one on Hunter S. Thompson either.

• 12:58Josh Clark?

  No, he might be undoable. You know how, remember the time we did that live show, it was the worst idea where we did how humor works? And we realized partway through in front of a live audience that explaining humor is like the least funny thing you can do.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  I don't remember that. Was that a, like a, a tour show or was that like for a?

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  It was a pod fest.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Was it really?

• 13:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, in LA, years back.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  I blocked that one out.

• 13:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't remember anything about it either.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  So you mentioned a lot of people have, you know, done their odes to the hotel, whether it's movies or songs or whatever. Perhaps the first one was a guy named Edgar Lee Masters, lived there from 31 to 44 and wrote a poem called The Hotel Chelsea. So he kind of got the ball rolling.

• 13:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And he's the guy I was saying earlier, he wrote Spoon River Anthology that was worried about it being, about it losing its, its vibe.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Well, let's read this first, a couple of lines then. Anita, don't know who that is, but he's writing it to Anita. Soon this Chelsea hotel will vanish before the city's merchant greed. Wreckers will wreck it and in its stead, more lofty walls will swell.

• 14:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  There you have it.

• 14:14Josh Clark?

  Yep. So this was the 40s. I'm guessing this was 1943 when the, um, when it changed hands, I think for the first or second time and was finally turned into the Hotel Chelsea. But he had very little to worry about because it got even more avant garde after that.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, it's kind of had its ups and downs as far as how, I mean, nice it was, I guess. It fell in pretty hard times after World War II. But it was always, you know, Dave described it as gruff but lovable. I mean, it never lost that charm, it seems like.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Even at its dive-est. Dylan Thomas, the, the famous author, um, was a, uh, heavy drinker, as I think everyone knows. He drank himself to death, uh, there at the Chelsea in 1953. And they have a plaque, and they don't have plaques for everybody, but there's a Dylan Thomas plaque. Dylan Thomas lived and rode at the Chelsea Hotel and from here, he sailed out to die.

• 15:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I read that, um, on the day that he fell into a coma that eventually he died from, he said, I've had 18 straight whiskies. I think that's the record. It's gotta be.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:25Josh Clark?

  So, um, yeah, Dylan Thomas was one of the ones whose death really kind of,

• 15:31Josh Clark?

  I don't quite know how to put it, but there's, there's certain aspects of the Chelsea Hotel and tragic figures dying in it is, is part of that. That's an aspect of it in and of itself. And Dylan Thomas kind of set the tone for that, right?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Immortalized, maybe?

• 15:47Josh Clark?

  Sure. So he, he became, he helped make the Chelsea Hotel famous in that respect by dying as a tragic figure there. Um, other people are just kind of famous and because they stayed in the Chelsea Hotel, it kind of gives it a little more props, like Jackson Pollock. Um, he lived there for a little while. Little known fact, the CIA paid his rent.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 16:10Josh Clark?

  Virgil, no, I'm kidding. Virgil, have you ever heard the theory that, that the CIA was behind the abstract expressionist movements to make the United States seem more intellectual to the Soviets?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  No, but that makes that joke a very deep cut. So I don't even feel bad this time.

• 16:25Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  For falling for it.

• 16:27Josh Clark?

  So there are other people too, that you may not have heard of, that I hadn't heard of, that were longtime residents that really kind of gave it like legitimacy. There was a music critic and composer named Virgil Thompson, who was apparently just incredibly prolific. He lived there for 50 years and died in room 920. Larry Rivers, who's considered the godfather of pop art. He lived there for about a decade. Um, and when you put all this together and then also bring in tourists, because don't forget, this is a hotel that some people are living in for decades, but there's also people coming and going. Um, and then you also throw in rich people who are basically just trying to hang out

• 17:10Josh Clark?

  with avant-garde artists, even though they have no artistic talent themselves. It's just the crowd they want to hang with. You put all these people together and you've got like who you would see if you went into the Chelsea Hotel.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. All right, we should take a break and we'll come back and talk about David and Stanley Bard, right after this.

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• 19:39Josh Clark?

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• 20:34Josh Clark?

  Okay, so I said earlier that the Chelsea Hotel was in capable hands for decades. And those hands were initially David Bard, and then after that, his son Stanley Bard. And between the two of them, they took Philip Hubert's vision of the socialist utopia, but really the really artsy part of it and just went to town. I saw it described as Stanley curated who lived in the Chelsea Hotel. It wasn't like, hey, I've got some money. I want to live here. You, you basically had to be vouched for by another avant garde artist that probably already lived there. That was a good way to get in.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this, I found this funny little fact that, you know, how little things can change history. David, in 1943, the elder Bard, he got together with some other investors to buy the hotel out of foreclosure. And the, the reason he did that is because he was a furrier. Who was allergic to fur and couldn't take it anymore. So the reason the Chelsea Hotel, one of the reasons that it kind of stayed that thing is because when David Bard took the reins in 1943, he, he kept that spirit alive with the artist and like taking a painting in lieu of rent. Like had it gone to just some money hungry, greedy people, uh, it may have completely changed

• 21:59Speaker 02

  in 1943 and we wouldn't even be talking about it today.

• 22:02Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  So had he not been a furrier, allergic to fur, it, it may have been a completely different scene there, but, uh, he ran the hotel until he died in 64. And like you said, Stanley, his son took over and Stanley, uh, Bard was great. He was, um, I've got a pretty fun, like apparently there was never any like, uh, problem he couldn't handle. He was known for being able to handle like whatever weirdness was going on there at the time. And Arthur Miller, when he was divorced from Marilyn Monroe, lived there for a period of years and wrote a lot about the Chelsea Hotel. And here's one good example about Stanley Bard. Arthur Miller called down after being so frustrated with how disgusting his carpet

• 22:45Speaker 02

  was, said, for Christ's sake, Stanley, don't you have a vacuum cleaner in the house? And he said, of course, we have lots of them. He said, well, why aren't they ever used? He said, they're not used? Stanley, you know GD well that you don't use them. I've never heard such a thing. Why don't they use them? Well, you're asking me why they don't use them? Well, you're the one who brought it up. Look, Stanley, just get a vacuum cleaner up here and let's just forget this conversation, please. Fine, how are you otherwise? Truthfully, there is no otherwise. All I am is a man waiting desperately for a vacuum cleaner. And then Arthur Miller said, and then he would laugh grateful for another happy tenant. And that was like, nothing was like, uh, ever wrong at the Chelsea. People were dying and being wheeled out of there in overdoses. And he would make jokes at like, no, the cops were here because, because they live

• 23:30Speaker 02

  there and the body bags and the gurneys are just props.

• 23:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so apparently Milos Forman, a true bohemian, he lived at the Chelsea from, I think, for the early 70s, about the first half of the 70s. And he asked Stanley once if anyone had ever died, I believe, to basically get him to admit.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:53Josh Clark?

  Because there were a lot of deaths, whether it was by suicide, murder.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Overdose.

• 23:59Josh Clark?

  Mattress fires, overdoses. Yeah. And it was just well known that there were a lot of deaths that happened in the Chelsea Hotel. So Milos Forman asked Stanley once if he could think of anybody who ever died there. And he could only come up with one person. And he was a painter named Alpheus Cole.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  That's funny.

• 24:20Josh Clark?

  He died in 1988, the oldest man in the world at 112. He died at the Chelsea Hotel. And that's the one person that Stanley could think of in the entire time that he was running the Chelsea Hotel.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Stanley ran it for 40 years after his dad died. But like I said, his dad had the same attitude. They asked David, the elder bard, why he didn't ever evict a tenant, who apparently was playing the drums and everyone was complaining and it was even driving him nuts. And his answer was, I like people.

• 24:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. It was cool. Like you could get away with, from what I saw, you could get away with basically anything up to murder, essentially. And Stanley would put up with it because that was the, that was the rhythm that his father had kind of laid out. And if you want to cultivate an avant garde artist colony in the middle of New York, you're going to have to do that or else just give up because it's not going to work otherwise.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. The, I gotta read this other Arthur Miller quote is pretty good, too. He said the Chelsea, and this is by the way, from the Chelsea Affect, A-F-F-E-C-T, about the bards. He said, the Chelsea, whatever else it was, was a house of infinite toleration.

• 25:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  This was the bard's genius, I thought, to have achieved an operating chaos, which at the same time could be home to people who are not crazy.

• 25:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Which I don't know who those people were.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:46Josh Clark?

  I saw Matt as a Hatter used more times in the oral history of the Chelsea Hotel than I ever have anywhere else.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, just about everybody there.

• 25:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:58Josh Clark?

  So my favorite Arthur Miller quote, by the way, is these pretzels are making me thirsty.

• 26:05Josh Clark?

  It's a great one.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let's jump into the 60s and 70s because that's when the Chelsea seemed like it had some of its most notable events and residents, even if they were part-time. My, my favorite guy, Bob Dylan, stayed at the Chelsea, stayed in room 211 for about three years, you know, off and on because he was going up to Woodstock as well. But 61 to 64 is when he was hanging out with Ginsberg and doing his thing. He wrote most of, if not all of Blonde on Blonde, which is his seventh album. And very specifically in the song Sarah, which was about his wife, his first wife Sarah that he married in 65. There's a great line in that song.

• 26:46Josh Clark?

  Storms are brewing in your eyes?

• 26:48Speaker 02

  No, different Sarah.

• 26:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  This one is very scathing, tough song. Bob Dylan was the champion of the anti-love song and this is kind of one of them. But he said, he writes about staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writing a sad-eyed lady of the lowlands for you.

• 27:04Josh Clark?

  So he references another song on the same album.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  That he wrote. It's a song to his ex-wife and he said, basically, I remember staying up for days writing sad-eyed lady of the lowlands for you.

• 27:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and no time is a good time for goodbye.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Have you seen the Dylan movie? Do you care about that at all?

• 27:23Josh Clark?

  No.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, gotcha.

• 27:26Josh Clark?

  So, but yeah, that was pretty seminal. I mean, that's one of his biggest albums, right? And I saw that at the time too, that Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol went basically head to head over Edie Sedgwick, who also stayed at the Chelsea Hotel. And apparently that was the end of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick's red hot,

• 27:52Josh Clark?

  I don't know what you'd call it, not a romance, just interaction. I don't, relationship, sure, we'll just go with that, but it was something other than that. And it lasted less than a year, but apparently Andy Warhol was so jealous that Edie Sedgwick. I've become totally obsessed with Bob Dylan, who may or may not have returned her advances. It just depends on who you ask. Bob Dylan says no. That but Andy Warhol lost because Bob Dylan was at the time like basically the biggest person in like alternative culture, the counterculture at the time, like even more than Andy Warhol was.

• 28:32Josh Clark?

  Like he was just huge and it's kind of, it's kind of difficult to overstate what a big deal this very big person was doing, living and working in the Chelsea Hotel, like what it did for the Chelsea Hotel's reputation.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And it's also mind blowing to know while Bob Dylan's up there in room 211, literally typing out one of the seminal albums of all time. At the same time, Arthur C. Clarke is adapting the screenplay for 2001 A Space Odyssey on a different floor and a different room. So like these kind of creative, you know, and, and Andy Warhol is in there shooting parts of Chelsea Girls, like stuff was really, really happening. It didn't earn its reputation. Just it wasn't overblown at all, you know?

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  Right. No. Another really famous thing that happened around that time was from Edie Sedgwick, she set her mattress on fire.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, on purpose, I think.

• 29:27Josh Clark?

  Was it on purpose? Because this was not her first apartment fire.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I think it was on purpose.

• 29:34Josh Clark?

  Okay, so it's possible this is a very turbulent time for her. It's she could have been heartbroken over Bob Dylan. She could have been upset Andy Warhol had turned his back on her. I know the previous apartment fire in a different building was because she had shot up a speedball and the cigarette fell out of her mouth and onto her mattress and set her, her, her house on fire.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  That's kind of on purpose, too.

• 29:58Josh Clark?

  I guess so, yeah. But that kind of leads me to, to something. There's something that just doesn't show up in the histories. I mean, here or there, it kind of comes up, but I think it's really understated the effect that it had on the community that developed in the Chelsea Hotel from the entire time that the building was open. And that is drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs. Like so, everybody from Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress, to Bob Dylan and beyond. I, I wouldn't put it beyond Ethan Hawke.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  He lived there for a while.

• 30:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, I mean, the club kids, like with the capital C and the capital K in the 80s and 90s. Um, like, some of them lived there and they were definitely doing drugs. They're like, they're, it was just a really big part of the experience of, um, of living at the Chelsea Hotel. It was like essentially one of the muses that was walking around the halls of that building all the time.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, Gabby Hoffman, uh, the actor, she, she was raised there from birth till she was 11 years old. Her mom was Viva, who was another one of Warhol's superstars. And little, little Gabby Hoffman from Sleepless in Seattle, you know, she's a grown lady, you know, middle aged woman now, uh, and has talked a lot about it. Um, she loved living there, but she, you know, she was stepping over people, you know, passed out with heroin needles in their arms and, you know, on her roller skates. And just a, you know, kind of a crazy life, but to her, it was just like, yeah, just lived in this sort of legendary divey apartment building. Like there was a gazillion non-famous ones in New York. Uh, this one just happened to be famous.

• 31:39Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  I did see where her mom, Viva, eventually, I don't think it was ever published, but she wrote a book. Uh, because writers always like very cheekily say that like Gabby Hoffman was sort of the Chelsea Hotels answer to Eloise, uh, the children's book. And apparently her mom wrote a book called Gabby at the Chelsea. But I don't think, I would try to find out, think it was ever released.

• 31:59Josh Clark?

  That's cute. I would love to see that.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:03Josh Clark?

  How about some more famous stuff that happened there, huh?

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, like liaisons, uh, Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen. That's a big one.

• 32:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, he wrote about that in Chelsea Hotel number two, one of his songs, very famous song. So they were together from 68 to 70 when Janis died. Um, I don't know if they were like a, an item or if they just, you know, liked hanging out, if you know what I mean?

• 32:30Speaker 02

  I think I know what you mean.

• 32:31Josh Clark?

  But regardless, they were just a famous, um, couple. From there. Yeah, that's not the right word. I'm having trouble pulling words out of the air. Another couple that you could probably call more of a couple was Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. They moved into the Chelsea. They were totally broke at the time. Patti Smith became like the poet of the punk scene. Robert Mapplethorpe famously became

• 32:58Josh Clark?

  the devil incarnate with his

• 33:02Josh Clark?

  photos.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Provocative pictures.

• 33:04Josh Clark?

  That's one way to put it, sure, of BDSM culture and gay culture in the 80s and like almost got the National Endowments for the Arts cancelled. Although I think it's unfair to say it was him. Jesse Helms almost got the NEA cancelled. And it was Robert Mapplethorpe was just making art. And Jesse Helms just did not think a bullwhip coming out of a man's rectum was art.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  That's right. I have that book. I haven't read it yet. It's on the shelf with a bunch of other rock and roll books that I have yet to get to.

• 33:34Josh Clark?

  The Jesse Helms story?

• 33:36Speaker 02

  No, yeah, exactly. What a rock and roll story.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Patti Smith's book that she wrote about her time with Mapplethorpe, I think it's called Just Kids, that I'm looking forward to getting into. But, boy, can I tell a quick Patti Smith Bob Dylan story?

• 33:55Josh Clark?

  Is there one?

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Nothing to do with the Chelsea Hotel?

• 33:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Well, you know what? I'm gonna say it does. I'll say she told him here.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  If you're a Dylan fan, you'll like this. You can just check out for a second. But on Bob Dylan's very famous Rolling Thunder Tour that he took up in 75, 76, some people look at that as like some peak Dylan live performance. Unbelievable stuff, but he has a performance of his song ISIS, one of his great songs after the record off the record Desire where it's just one of the great live performances of anyone ever is his performance on Rolling Thunder of ISIS. And he doesn't play the guitar. And he's just standing there and he didn't do that a lot. And he, Patti Smith is the one who encouraged him. He said, Bob, you should you should do ISIS without the guitar. And he said, Patty, I don't know what to do with my hands. And she said, make them into fists.

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  So did he?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Heck yeah, he did.

• 34:49Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  And Patty Smith wrote also about the Chelsea a lot. And the restaurant there, it's not officially part of it, but it's connected. You can get to it through the hotel, El Quixote. Underwent a lot of renovations to reopen. It was a pretty big dive of a place back then, but it was cheap food and it was Spanish food. And so people ate there, even though apparently the food wasn't good. I saw it described, was it the paella could have been consistency of yesterday's oatmeal. The taste of the sangria might be best described as purple. But before the Woodstock Music Festival, Patty Smith went to the Chelsea, or was living there, I guess.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  And she said, "I walked into El Quixote's bar one afternoon in 1969 to find musicians everywhere, sitting before tables laid with mounds of shrimp and green sauce paella, pitchers of sangria and bottles of tequila. Jefferson Airplane was there, so was Janis Joplin and her band. Jimi Hendrix sat by the door." Like, can you, like, just walking into a restaurant and seeing something like that happening?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 35:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  You'd be like, "I don't really care about any of these people."

• 35:59Josh Clark?

  No, I do. I love Jimi Hendrix and clearly I love at least Jefferson Starship.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  You were like, "One day, you don't know it yet, you're gonna write a song called Sarah."

• 36:10Josh Clark?

  That's right. And I spent at least one summer just listening to Janis Joplin's greatest hits over and over again. So I could be down with that scene, man.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 36:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  All right. We'll be right back and we'll finish up on the Chelsea Hotel right after this.

• 37:14Josh Clark?

  Here's some big news for Costco members. Costco is now delivering through Uber Eats. And get this, for a limited time, you can get 20% off your first three Costco orders.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Oh?

• 37:26Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:27Speaker 02

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• 37:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, whether it's everyday groceries, whether it's household necessities, whether it's your favorite Costco finds, Uber Eats makes it easy to get what you need delivered right to your doorstep.

• 37:49Speaker 02

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• 38:15Speaker 02

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• 38:27Josh Clark?

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• 38:41Speaker 02

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• 38:51Josh Clark?

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• 39:24Speaker 02

  All right, we talked about people dying at the Chelsea, so we should probably talk more specifically about this, because it seemed to happen a lot, right?

• 39:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there were people who jumped out of windows. Remember, it was a 12-story building. And this was nothing new. People, there was a rumor of a ghost, of a woman who supposedly lived there, was an artist who was upset with herself and cut off her hand, and then threw herself out the window. This would have been in the first couple decades of the 20th century. But it didn't stop with her. It just kept going and going and going. And then even if someone didn't die by suicide, or wasn't murdered, or their place wasn't set on fire, just the day-to-day grimy grittiness of it, of heroin addicts like shooting up in the bathrooms, or sex workers like washing their underwear in

• 40:16Josh Clark?

  the bathrooms, that was another quote from the oral history of all places that Vanity Fair had on the Chelsea Hotel. Like, there was just a definite dark side to it, which is, it just kind of underscores what I was saying before, that people were like, and I felt so safe there. And it was like, what was it like outside of this building if this was what it was like inside, you know?

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point. There was a very notorious death there, depending on who you ask. Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, there in room 100, in October of 1978. We can't say for sure, because he denied it to his last days, which was before he went to court. He died of a heroin overdose before he was able to go to trial for that. But what we do know is that Nancy Spungen... Was stabbed to death there.

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a biographer author named Phil Strongman or Strongman. I would call myself Phil Strongman if that were my name. But he wrote a punk, a punk nonfiction book, I guess, called Pretty Vacant. And he points to Rocket's Red glare, who was a bodyguard for the Sex Pistols at the time, who was the last person known to have seen Nancy Spongen alive. And there was also supposedly a bunch of money, cash in the apartment that couldn't be accounted for after her body was discovered. So he makes a pretty good case. Apparently also Rocket's Red glare was admitted to it later on to some people. So who knows?

• 41:55Josh Clark?

  But I don't think it was Sid Vicious.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know Rocket's Red glare from a lot of those early Jim Jarmusch movies. Interesting dude. Rufus Wainwright lived there in 2000 to work on a record. And there's a pretty funny story there where he was, he called down to the front desk and asked if they could send up a quart of milk. And apparently the bellman arrived with a tray full of just tons and tons of drugs because milk unbeknownst to Rufus was the code word at the Chelsea for drugs.

• 42:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because he was the only person in the history of the hotel who actually wanted milk at one point.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  And you mentioned Ethan Hawke, or I was about to say our old friend. We have nothing to do with him. I love Ethan Hawke. I think he's a great, passionate, artistic dude. But he lived there for three years when he was sort of, I don't know, think he was fully divorced, but was when he was with Uma Thurman, they were kind of on the rocks.

• 42:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  And he made the movie Chelsea Walls in 2001, which is a series of short films about a day in the life of people at the Chelsea Hotel.

• 43:02Josh Clark?

  So you know something about him? I've become more and more of a fan over the years. I think he's really kind of grown into his talent.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  I think he's, I like the guy a lot and I like his daughter and I like Uma. I think I'm a big fan of that family.

• 43:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, who's his daughter?

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Maya Hawke, she's an actor.

• 43:23Josh Clark?

  Oh, I don't, I'm not familiar.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Up and coming. She's on Stranger Things is probably what most people know her from these days.

• 43:29Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 43:31Josh Clark?

  So what else, Chuck?

• 43:33Speaker 02

  And she looks just like Uma.

• 43:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really funny. I mean, a little bit of Ethan in there, but she's got Uma's mannerisms and voice. It's pretty cool.

• 43:42Josh Clark?

  Nice. So you've mentioned that the Chelsea Hotel underwent renovations for a long time. Over a decade from what I saw. The whole thing started when Stanley Bard was forced out back in 2007 or '08. I saw both. Remember that his father, David Bard, had purchased the Chelsea with two other families, two other men. Well, their heirs were basically like, you are not making money here. Like, he was very, Stanley was very famous for accepting art in lieu of rent. If you were hard, you know, down on your luck, but you were an artist, like, he would just, you know, look the other way for a few months. Like, he was not running it like a business, and he was very open about that.

• 44:27Josh Clark?

  So apparently the heirs of the other two owners were like, you need to get out. We have two thirds of a vote, and you're out. And that was when

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Big bummer.

• 44:37Josh Clark?

  Things just kinda, yeah, big bummer. Things just started to change because a few years after that, they sold it to some investors. I think that was in 2011. They sold it for $80 million. The investors came in, fired all of the staff because they were union and brought in non-union workers.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  They did away with basically everything that was cool and intangible about the place. And they also took down all the art. Like, one of the things Stanley did was hang art by the artists who'd lived there all throughout the place. It was just laden with art. They took all of it off the walls, put it in storage. Apparently some that wasn't Stanley's, or that wasn't the hotel's too. The Larry Rivers Foundation is suing to get one of his paintings back that they say was just on loan. And from that point on, it just became kind of ham-fisted and not very pleasant for the people who lived there in the Chelsea.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a very controversial renovation, uh, because like you said, there's still people living there. Some of those residents, um, held out and fought it and, uh, for as long as they could. Some other residents were mad at those residents because they were like, we're just living under, under construction because it's taking forever because you're fighting this. Like, it's gonna happen. Just give up so we can at least get this finished and live a normal life again. Um, so it really, you know, it depends on your perspective. There's a really, really good documentary that I highly recommend called Dreaming Walls from 2022, where they go inside a lot of these original residents apartments, uh, see what they're like. There are also some good books about this. Um, from what I've found,

• 46:17Speaker 02

  as of now, I think there's about 40 of them still there, uh, original residents in those apartments. And when you stay there, you're walking down the hall to your room and all the doors look the same. And then you'll come across a door that's not the same. And that's an original resident.

• 46:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, which is pretty cool that they're still there. They're also rent controlled, I believe, which is how they're able to still stay there.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, for sure. Yeah. And it's just one of those things where I really like staying there, but I, I feel like, man, I bet these people hate people like me that like staying here.

• 46:49Josh Clark?

  Right. He's walking around all agog in the.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  I know. And like, you know, with my nine-year-old daughter, uh, who's not Gabby Hoffman.

• 46:58Josh Clark?

  Right. She's not on roller skates. She's not an Uncle Buck.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  I know. So I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing, about like, if, if the staying there support that kind of action in general, or?

• 47:09Josh Clark?

  Well, you know, you bring that up. I thought that too. Um, you and me and I stayed there a couple of times, uh, over the years. We did the most avant-garde thing you can do. We stayed at the Chelsea Hotel when we went to see comedian Tom Rhodes at the Gotham Comedy Club next door.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, that's very close.

• 47:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he's super underground, but I mean, I totally get that feeling that you're talking about where it's just like, this was something and now is this like the dolled up version, like kind of the fake Disneyfied version of what it used to be. And that leads me to a question that I had throughout researching this Chuck. Where is whatever the Chelsea Hotel was now? Where is it? I don't think it's in New York anymore. I don't think it's something like that can survive in New York because it's just gotten so wealthy and wealthy and wealthy and wealthiness is not really, it doesn't really jive with what the Chelsea Hotel was in its heyday. So like, where is it? Is it somewhere else in the world?

• 48:10Josh Clark?

  Is it in Kansas? Like, where did this go? I really want to know who's doing really interesting, cool work these days. Where can you find it? Or is it just not around?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  I know, I'm with you. And also the notion of like, it's a pretty easy target, but like, you know, I bet the Holiday Inn Express in Times Square kicked out some residents for whatever building they took over, you know, like, is there any hotel group on the earth that isn't gross and did things like that in these dense cities?

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, look what happened to San Francisco. Like, it lost a lot of its.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  I don't want to say luster because it wasn't luster that that made it so charming, but it lost some of its jam.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But, you know, El Quixote is awesome now. They've got some really good chefs that work there. You know, a big shout out to John Pacini. He's the general manager there. He's a Stuff You Should Know listener. He's always been very kind to me. So a big shout out to him and he's just, he's done a great job. And the paella is good now and I've had some really great experiences in that restaurant. And in that hotel, the lobby bar there is amazing. Like, it's a truly great place to go have a drink.

• 49:23Josh Clark?

  Awesome.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  And if you, if you stay there, you can get in. But if you don't stay there, you can still go get a drink there. I would recommend it. So I don't know. It's, it's definitely makes me question. Things, but like I said, is there a place in New York where original residents weren't screwed over in some way or another to make way for some new expensive thing?

• 49:42Josh Clark?

  Oh, I mean also not just like people living there. I mean, like the art, the

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:48Josh Clark?

  The artistic vibe that was there. Where did that go?

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Oh, totally.

• 49:52Josh Clark?

  Cause it's not like that stuff dies, you know?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  I know, I know. And a lot of those 40 residents or some of them are still artists making art there.

• 50:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  They just gotta, I don't know if that documentary was accurate, but I think that the residents either aren't allowed to use the main entrance, or maybe they just prefer not to.

• 50:12Josh Clark?

  I could see either one, actually.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  I really could too, actually.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  Uh, well, that's it for the Chelsea Hotel. We could keep going on and on and on, but I feel like this is a good place to stop, don't you?

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I mean, let's quickly mention that there were some very famous things auctioned off.

• 50:28Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, good call.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Some of the famous doors, Bob Dylan's door was auctioned off. I think either Leonard Cohen or, or, uh, Janis Joplin's door was auctioned. And that iconic sign, as best I can figure, was renovated, but part of that renovation included replacing the letters. And those original

• 50:47Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  were sold off.

• 50:49Josh Clark?

  Cool. Thank you for figuring that out, because I could not make heads or tails of how the sign was restored, but then they auctioned off the sign.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think just pieces of the original, you know, you got a C on both sides and H and E on both sides. And, you know, I think you found even that they had them wired, so you could put it in your loft and light it up.

• 51:09Josh Clark?

  Pretty awesome.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Pretty cool.

• 51:12Josh Clark?

  Uh, okay. Well, that's it. Uh, that's it for Chelsea Hotel. Uh, if you want to know more about Chelsea Hotel, go check out the Chelsea Hotel. And since I said Chelsea Hotel three times, as was foretold in 2008, I've unlocked listener mail.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  That's right. And to prevent another listener mail, yes, we know Naked Lunch was written there.

• 51:33Josh Clark?

  Thank you. Thank you, sir.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  And a lot of other stuff was written there. You can't cover it all.

• 51:38Josh Clark?

  No.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Hey, guys. This is about inner monologues, too, because I mentioned, aside from me thinking weird things when I'm falling asleep, I mentioned Emily's thumb spelling. And it turns out, a ton of people do stuff like that. And I told her, and she was just delighted to find out that she is in a club. Hey, guys, over after a decade, I finally had the inspiration to write. On the latest episode, Chuck mentioned Emily spells out words with her thumb while stressed. I do something extremely similar. Instead of tracing the letters, I spell them out in the sign language alphabet.

• 52:08Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  And there were all kinds of variations. Some people airtype. Sometimes it's cursive, sometimes it's sign language. Like, it's really interesting. I spell them out in sign language alphabet. Been doing it since I was at least 11, and have never heard of anyone else spelling out words while stressed. I would love to know the reason, but I'm also just content to know that someone else has a similar eccentricity. Thanks for sharing such a lovely anecdote of what it means to love someone with all their little oddities and peccadilloes. One of my favorite words.

• 52:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  It's the acceptance and joy in the mundane and extraordinary in life that keeps me coming back every week for a new episode. I'm a sandwich listener. I'm sure you're gonna get dozens of these emails claiming to be Emily's long-lost finger-spelling twin, but I had to write in because I've always wanted to. Stay weird. And Lauren Neider, or Needer, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, you are in a larger club, because we got, heard from a lot of you.

• 52:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's really cool. I'm glad Emily's delighted.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:03Josh Clark?

  I'm delighted, too.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Me, too.

• 53:05Josh Clark?

  Well, if you want to be like Lauren, and write in and let us know that you're a part of a club, too, well, we'd love to hear that kind of stuff. You can send it off to [email protected].

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.