Back When the Chelsea Was Still The Chelsea

         With the Chelsea Hotel presently going to hell in a handcart, we thought that a glance back at a happier time might be a welcome relief.  Rummaging through used bookstores, Roger Wade came up with a 1961 edition of Frommer’s New York on 5 Dollars A Day, reminding us by its very title that there used to be ways to survive in New York on the cheap.  The book gives a list of budget hotels, foremost among them our beloved Chelsea, where:

In 1960, If you mentioned the book, you could get a spotlessly clean single room without a bath for $3 per night on a weekly basis [that’s $27 a week!], and double rooms with bath starting a $6 per night, even by the day.

     Yeah, and that means that if you brought in your art portfolio you could probably get one even cheaper.  And as an added bonus, a young Stanley Bard would convince you that your room was spotlessly clean even if you initially thought otherwise.

      The Chelsea is actually on the high end of the budget hotels Wade lists (and, sadly, one of the few remaining as a hotel).  The best deal to be had was at the Arlington on West 25 St. (as of 2005, a Comfort Inn), where you could get a single room without a bath for $1.75/night!

Nowadays, according to Wade, the Chelsea is, “still quirky and it’s still clean, and rooms start at around $220 per night.”  He probably didn’t read that Page 6 Magazine article about that guy who found Janis Joplin’s Maxipad!

Wade also doesn’t mention (because he probably doesn’t know), that unlike in 1961, or the first half of 2007 for that matter, the hotel is no longer run by Stanley Bard, but instead by a witch’s coven of evil, greedy scumbags.  At least the Chelsea Hotel still looks basically the same physically—though we need to keep our eyes peeled as Marlene and her slaves seem to be gearing up to chop the place up in order to level out it’s quirkiness quotient.

Hey, you know what else, it would be nice to find one of these guides from, say, 1968 or ’69 or thereabouts.  If anyone has access to a copy, please let us know, as this could help Chelsea Hotel tenants embroiled in court battles to establish the rental history of their apartments. -- Ed Hamilton

(Sources: Gothamist, Boots N All )