Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

Piri Thomas, Author of “Down These Mean Streets Dies” at 83

Piri Thomas, born John Peter Thomas in New York City's Harlem Hospital in1928, grew up poor in Spanish Harlem and wrote the now classic best-selling autobiography “Down these Mean Streets” about his childhood there.   Among his other works are: "Savior, Savior Hold My Hand", "Seven Long Times" and "Stories from El Barrio".   A true artist and social activist who worked with drug addicts, Piri is a former Chelsea Hotel resident and a friend of the late painter Herbert Gentry. 

Thomas married Betty Gross in the 1970s. This second marriage lasted until Betty's death in 1985. Betty Gross is the daughter of Mr. Joseph Gross, one of the three partners who bought the Hotel.  The other partners were David Bard and Julius Krauss.

Thomas’s last years were clouded by a legal dispute with his step-son, Chelsea Hotel minority shareholder David Elder.  Basically, Thomas was the beneficiary of a trust administered by Elder, granting Thomas the income from 16 shares (8%) of Chelsea Hotel stock. (The trust was established by Thomas’s wife and Elder’s mother, Betty Gross.)

In 2002, Elder withheld  $1.2 million dollars in hotel income from Thomas, claiming that the money was part of the principle of the shares.  Elder had a vested interest in doing so, since upon Thomas’ death the shares reverted to him.  While the courts ultimately decided in Thomas’ favor, the dispute went on for years and no doubt cost Thomas much in mental anguish and money to resolve.  The dispute can be seen as a kind of warm up round for the main event, which was Elder and Marlene Krauss’s hostile takeover of the Chelsea Hotel and subsequent ousting of long-time manager Stanley Bard. 

NY Times obit -

The Chelsea Hotel Under the Reign of Joseph Chetrit

If you learned about the ongoing struggle to save the Chelsea Hotel from today's Morning Edition of NPR, welcome.  And, in case the NPR piece left you with the impression that the Chelsea's troubles were a new thing, you should know that the struggle to save the Chelsea has been going on for four years now, ever since the Bards were ousted in a hostile take over.  Over 40 people have been evicted in those years, as a dedicated group of activists have struggled to maintain the Chelsea as a haven for the arts.  There is a lot of information about the Bring Back the Bards campaign on this blog, but in this post we'll talk about what's been happening since the Chelsea Hotel was sold to a group of investors led by Joe Chetrit. 

Chetrit's first move when he took over was to bust the union and to hire non-union workers to manage the desk and clean the hotel.  We now have a skeleton staff and although they keep the place reasonably clean there is no engineer at night, which leads to problems when the water gets turned off.  They've taken all of the art down from the walls of the Hotel, including, the more valuable paintings by artists such as Larry Rivers, Donald Baechler, and Phillip Taaffe.  Although some of these paintings belong to tenants at the Hotel, and were simply on loan to the Hotel, tenants have been required to prove ownership in order to get back their paintings (and as far as we know no one has managed to reclaim their paintings as yet).  And, of course, most obvious to outsiders the Hotel is now closed to tourists.  So if you stop by they will throw you out. 

There have been two evicitions that we know of since Chetrit took over the building bringing to 42 the total number of evictions since the Bard family was ousted.  We expect more to come, as tenants have been receiving a lot of hostile certified mail, including various pay up notices. Also many tenants have had their rent checks refused.  This is a common tactic of harassment used by NYC landlords, and though a judge will eventually order them to accept the checks in most cases, it allows them to get tenants in court. This is a tactic that is most effective against the elderly who may not understand that their rent has not been paid and may spend the money. 

The Chelsea Hotel is now in the process of being "gently renovated," to quote Kaufman.  Workers have been gutting the East wing of the 7th Floor for the past few weeks.  This wing was probably chosen because there are no remaining tenants on that wing, the last being Willem Van Es who died tragically in December 2009. Past tenants of this wing include: William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, John Giorno, Michel Auder & Viva,  Ethan Hawke, Librettist Arnold Weinstein, William Balcom, Jacques Stern, Gus Hall and Ben Lucien Burman.   (Thanks to Sherill Tippins for the list.) We have not received too many complaints about noise or dust, though one tenant was flooded as the result of the construction. (Dedicated readers of this blog can probably guess that it was none other than tenant activist Arthur Nash, way down on the 2nd floor.) From what we've seen the work seems to show little regard for the historical integrity of the Hotel.  It's anyones guess as to which wing of the Hotel will fall prey to the jackhammer next although, as Chetrit has 77 million dollars in loans to pay back, he is probably on a pretty tight schedule.  He has been unloading a lot of properties lately and should have some ready money at hand.