Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

Live Bloggin the Martha Stewart Show

We're blogging live this morning from the Martha Stewart show.  The topic:  greedy developers and rampant gentrification in NYC. Just kidding, folks.  It's really about blogs and bloggers. We are in the very back because we ignored the orders to wear pastels. (We would put up a picture, but that's not allowed right now.)  Ok. We managed to get that picture up.  See how far back we are.  That pad thai they're cooking really smells good from the cheap seats.

They're finished with the Pad Thai. Now they're frosting a cake with a blogger who's blog is about preparing recipes from Martha's cookbook. He's prepared 289 so far, though he claims to have a life.  He has on an apron with his head on Russell Crow's body. 

Pick Your Poison, Bohemians

Sugar and lard or pure grain alcohol.  We’ve got it all at the Chelsea Hotel.  In addition to Mark Isreal’s proposed doughnut shop, we have now received news that the Chelsea Hotel is getting not one but two bars on the ground floor.  All of these businesses will apparently be connected to the historic lobby:  the doughnut shop in the former Dan’s Guitars space, a bar in Stanley’s former office, and another bar somewhere behind the check-in desk.

The proprietor of at least one of these bars will reportedly be Noel Ashman, who should fit right in to the Chelsea Hotel culture, seeing as how he was evicted from his last establishment for non-payment of rent.  Noel also boasts his own facebook group established by former employees who claim he hasn’t paid them.  Welcome, Noel.  With your history we’re certain you’ll soon be meeting Belkin, Burden.  Be sure to say Hi to good ol’ Smokin’ Joe when you see him in court.

Blame the French for the Chelsea Hotel

In a recently published article, Sherill Tippins traces the origins of the Chelsea Hotel’s role as nexus of the artistic community to the French utopian socialist philosopher Charles Fourier’s influence upon architect Phillip Hubert. It’s Tippins contention that when Hubert completed the building in 1884 it encapsulated Fourier’s notion of art social – a philosophical ideal whereby artists have the role of “unifying a diverse population and guiding it forward in its evolution.”  Tippins history of the Chelsea Hotel, which will be published later this year, will show how Fourier’s ideas have anchored the Hotel throughout its many incarnations.  Below is an excerpt from the article.  

“…. the Chelsea’s physical and economic design resembled in many ways those of a standard phalanstery, so the social makeup of its Association echoed that recommended by Fourier for a phalanx in its infancy : a central core of cultivators and manufacturers, a smaller population of capitalists, scholars, and artists for the sake of economic survival, psychological balance, and spiritual growth ; and a Board of Directors manned by the wealthiest and most knowledgeable members of the cooperative. [26] At the Chelsea, located not in the country but in the midst of an urban environment then under massive construction, the “cultivators and manufacturers” were represented by real estate developers, builders, and contractors then involved in the creative process of “growing” the city -in this case including most of the people who literally built, equipped, and decorated the Chelsea itself. The “capitalists, scholars, and artists” included not only by the painters and sculptors in the fifteen top-floor studios, but by a number of musicians, actors, authors, professors, bibliophiles, financiers, and wealthy philanthropists who lived downstairs. And with a founding Board of Directors that included a well-known stockbroker, a former president of the Merchants and Traders’ Exchange, a future governor of Virginia, and the president of the company that installed the Chelsea’s innovative, patented roof, the call for a wealthy and knowledgeable leadership had been answered as well.

With an eighty-family building and a reasonably diverse population, the Chelsea stood  poised to take its place, as John Noyes had recommended, “at the front of the general march of improvement.” But the question remained : how would it go about doing this ? What kind of work was to be accomplished here ?

The answer seems to lie in the Fourierist notion of art social -the importance assigned to the role of artists in unifying a diverse population and guiding it forward in its evolution. Hints of this intention lie not only in the provision of fifteen art studios occupying the Chelsea’s entire top floor, but also in the pronounced presence of nature themes in its décor-stained-glass transoms displaying images of seashells and flowers, etched-glass door panels featuring forest scenes, hand-carved wood fireplace mantels and hand-painted tiles, a lobby hung with paintings of the Hudson River school, and exquisite wrought-iron sunflowers adorning its exterior balconies and central stairway -the latter evoking a dream of the liberated American artist as vividly as Fourier’s Crown Imperial flower represented the downtrodden artist in “civilization.”

For more of Sherill's writings about the Chelsea Hotel read the "History of Activism" section of this blog.

 

Send In Your Abbie Hoffman Stories to Help Sherill Tippins Finish Her History of the Chelsea Hotel

 

From Harry Smith & William Burroughs to Andy Warhol & Stanley Bard, Chelsea Artists of the 60s Undermined the Complacency of Mainstream Society

 

History of Activism at the Chelsea Pt. 5: Jackson Pollock Raises a Toast to the W.P.A.

 

History of Activism at the Chelsea: Pt. 4: Painter John Sloan -- Fought for Change with the Socialist Party, the IWW, and the ACLU

 

The History of Activism at the Chelsea Hotel, Part 3: Writer Herbert Croly, Co-found of The New Republic, Had Chelsea Ties

 

Activism at the Chelsea Hotel Pt. II: William Dean Howells, Employed Literary Realism as a Tool for Change

 

Activism at the Chelsea Hotel Pt. I: Architect Philip Hubert, Designed the Chelsea as an Experiment in Socialist Living

Clogged Arteries at the Chelsea