Hotel Chelsea
216 West 23rd Street | also 230 West 23rd Street, 222 West 23rd Street, 228 West 23rd Street | Chelsea | built 1885
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1871
The Excelsior Buildings, an armory rented by the city, stand on the lot where the Chelsea will rise
Construction began in 1869 on the seven-story Excelsior Buildings, which stretched along the south side of West 23rd Street from No. 216 through 226. Finished in 1871, the block was part of a corrupt Tammany Hall scheme later called the Armory Frauds: the city had twelve National Guard regiments but rented 24 armories, this one among them. The Hotel Chelsea was later built on the same ground.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1878
Fire destroys the Excelsior Buildings and leaves the 23rd Street lot empty for four years
The New York Times reported on February 18, 1878, that fire had totally destroyed the armory block on West 23rd Street, and the lot stayed empty for four years. In November 1882 the trade journal Record & Guide announced that a cooperative association planned an apartment house on the site, to be named the Chelsea, with suites ranging from three to nine rooms.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1883
Cornell Ironworks casts the floral iron balconies on the Chelsea's brick facade
The seven rows of floral iron balconies on the Chelsea's red-brick front were made by Cornell Ironworks, a firm whose roots go back to 1828. By the late nineteenth century it was one of the city's largest manufacturers, employing 1,200 at its peak, and its other credits include ironwork on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. The 1966 landmark report praised the balconies for lending the tall facade an atmosphere of charm.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1883
Philip Hubert designs the Chelsea as a residential cooperative
Architect Philip Hubert of Hubert, Pirsson & Co. files plans in January 1883 for a Queen Anne cooperative apartment house on West 23rd Street, part of a "Home Club" ownership system he pioneered. Cast-iron balconies patterned with sunflowers wrap the red-brick facade, and a central iron staircase with matching sunflower ironwork rises from the lobby to the twelfth floor.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1884
The Chelsea opens as a cooperative apartment house, the city's tallest
The Chelsea began taking residents in 1884 as a housing cooperative designed by Philip Hubert of Hubert, Pirsson & Co. At roughly 180 feet it was the tallest apartment building in New York when it was finished. The co-op did not last: the building was officially converted into an apartment hotel in 1905, the use that made it famous.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1891
A former envoy who knew Lincoln is arrested as a drunk and taken home to the Chelsea
On August 26, 1891, attorney George Norris found Charles Adolphe Pineton, Marquis de Chambrun, seriously ill at his Nassau Street office and summoned two policemen to move him. The officers arrested the Marquis for drunkenness, but Norris explained matters to a sergeant and took him home to the Chelsea. The Marquis, a Civil War special envoy whom the Sun said had been close to Lincoln, died in his apartment about three weeks later.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1905
The Chelsea converts from a cooperative into an apartment hotel
Financial strain ends the building's cooperative ownership, and it reopens as an apartment hotel taking both long-term residents and short-term guests. The conversion sets the mixed identity, part residence, part transient hotel, that shapes the Chelsea for the rest of the century.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1921
Actress Manila Martan teaches her pet squirrel Jimmie to ride a phonograph like a merry-go-round
Nita Martan, a film actress billed as Manila Martan for her repeated roles in the Tarzan serials, lived at the Chelsea in 1921 and shared her apartment with a red squirrel named Jimmie. On November 21 the New-York Tribune reported that she had taught him several tricks, the most unusual being to treat the phonograph in her apartment as a merry-go-round.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1931
Charles P. Champion, an original stockholder, dies at 94 a year short of his fifty-year lease
Charles P. Champion, an original stockholder in the Chelsea and a founder of the Union League Club, died in his apartment on May 1, 1931, at the age of 94. He had marched off to the Civil War in 1861 with the Seventh Regiment. The New York Times noted that one more year of life would have let him occupy his suite for the full fifty-year term of his original lease.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1934
A manager commissions satirical paintings of three politicians, and they are covered up
In late 1934 the Chelsea's manager, Jerry Gagin, commissioned John McKiernan to paint a series of satirical works depicting three politicians. William Knott, president of Knott Hotels, which had leased the hotel since 1921, ordered Gagin to take the murals down. Gagin refused, and the murals were covered up instead.
“There was controversy in late 1934 when then-manager Jerry Gagin commissioned a series of satirical paintings from John McKiernan, depicting three politicians.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1942
David Bard's syndicate takes over the bankrupt Chelsea and fights a rumor that he won it at poker
The hotel went bankrupt around 1941, about when the last original Chelsea Association member died. In July 1942 the New York Bank for Savings took it at auction. That October the bank sold the building and an adjoining brownstone for an assessed value of $561,500 to a new owner, the Chelsea Hotel Company. Hungarian immigrants represented by David Bard and Frank Amigo ran the business, and Bard had to quash tenants' rumors that he had won the hotel at poker and meant to raze it.
“The New York Bank for Savings repossessed the building at an auction in approximately July 1942.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1953
Dylan Thomas falls ill in Room 205 and is taken to St. Vincent's
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was living in Room 205 at the back of the Chelsea when, on November 3, 1953, he went out drinking at the White Horse Tavern in the Village. After another night out he fell violently ill back at the hotel, and friends called an ambulance around 1 a.m. on November 5. He was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where he died on November 9 at age 39.
Source: eonline.com
- 1955
The El Quijote restaurant, run by Spanish immigrants, moves into the Chelsea
In 1955 El Quijote, a restaurant run by Spanish immigrants, moved into the Hotel Chelsea. Next to the lobby, it is decorated with a marble terrazzo floor, red-vinyl dining booths and murals of scenes from Don Quixote. Before 2018 it seated 220 people; a 2022 renovation cut its capacity to 45 or 65.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
Stanley Bard takes over as manager of the Hotel Chelsea
Stanley Bard became the Chelsea's manager in 1964 after the death of his father, David, and ran the hotel for 43 years. Over the decades the hotel's residents included Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clarke and Patti Smith. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building a city landmark in March 1966.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1966
The city designates the Chelsea a landmark for its ironwork
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Hotel Chelsea an individual landmark, its report noting how the ironwork balconies lend charm to the tall brick facade. Those floral cast-iron balconies were made decades earlier by Cornell Ironworks, a manufacturer that also supplied ironwork for the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1968
Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin have an affair at the Chelsea that Cohen later turns into a song
In 1968 the singers Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin began an affair at the Chelsea. Cohen later wrote the song Chelsea Hotel about it, and a second version titled Chelsea Hotel No. 2. A plaque installed at the hotel in 2009 memorializes the affair.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1978
Writer Mary Cantwell and her daughter rent a room above the one where Nancy Spungen died
Between apartments in 1978, the writer Mary Cantwell moved into the Chelsea with her teenage daughter, three cats and a dog, and later described the stay in her memoir Manhattan, When I Was Young. Their room lay directly above the one where Nancy Spungen had died a few days before, and a plainclothes man who knocked at their door asked whether they had heard anything. They stayed eight months.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1978
Nancy Spungen is found stabbed to death in Room 100
Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, is found fatally stabbed in their room at the Chelsea. Vicious is charged with her murder and dies of a heroin overdose in Greenwich Village the following February, before the case reaches trial.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1986
A balcony falls from the Chelsea's facade and injures two passersby
In 1986 a balcony fell off the front of the Hotel Chelsea and injured two people on the sidewalk below. The collapse prompted a renovation of the building. By then the hotel was largely residential and in poor repair; after manager Stanley Bard's children became involved, the family finished a $500,000 facade renovation in 1990.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
Painter Alphaeus Cole dies at 112 after 35 years at the Chelsea
Alphaeus Philemon Cole, an award-winning painter, etcher and engraver, spent 35 years living at the Chelsea and died on November 25, 1988. At 112 he was the oldest man in the world. He belonged to a long line of visual artists at the hotel, a list that the Daytonian in Manhattan author says includes Willem de Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe, Christo and Larry Rivers.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 2011
Developer Joseph Chetrit buys the Chelsea for $80 million and tenants organize
In May 2011 the real estate developer Joseph Chetrit announced that he had bought the Chelsea for $80 million, and he took title that August. He stopped accepting new reservations in July and hired Gene Kaufman to design a renovation. Residents protected by rent regulation could stay, but the staff were fired, and in September the tenant Zoe Pappas formed the Chelsea Tenants Association.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Hotel ChelseaWikipedia
- The Chelsea Hotel - 222 West 23rd StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- Stop and admire the Chelsea Hotel’s beautiful iron balconiesEphemeral New York
- The roses in the window guards outside an East 51st Street townhouseEphemeral New York
- An unexpected stay at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978Ephemeral New York
- The last New York days of Sid ViciousEphemeral New York
- The wrought-iron flowers on the Chelsea HotelEphemeral New York
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