Ghosts, say guests, are living in the Chelsea Hotel. Legend has it that Sid Vicious, the late punk rocker who killed his girlfriend on the second floor of the 350-room Manhattan landmark, runs the crotchety lobby elevator. And Dylan Thomas, who was carried out of the hotel dying after drinking 18 shots of whisky, is still spoken to by visiting poets looking for inspiration. Even the anonymous spirits of failed artists, beatniks and psychedelic wanderers who have passed through the Chelsea are sometimes heard calling to the generation of would-be's now in residence. "There's mystery in this place," concedes hotel manager Stanley Bard, "the mystery of creative people."
This week 100 years of that mystery will be celebrated in New York. Mayor Ed Koch will present a commemorative plaque to the Chelsea at a ceremony kicking off a year-long series of art and dance shows in the hotel. "Chelsea Hotel," a highly acclaimed centennial album, has just been published, featuring photographs of current Chelsea tenants by Claudio Edinger and the remembrances of such ex-residents as William Burroughs and Arthur C. Clarke. A documentary film is in the making, too. The mystique still lingers in the hotel where, claims Bard, "more working artists and writers have lived than any other building in the world."
Built in 1883 under the direction of Queen Victoria's architect, the 12-story Chelsea was New York's first co-op apartment and for 20 years its tallest building. Ten wealthy families, lured by the high ceilings and hand-carved fireplaces that graced each room, were the original tenants. Perhaps the builders sensed that someday Janis Joplin and the Jefferson Airplane would rehearse inside; all interior walls were built three feet thick and advertised as "warproof."
But the gilded-age Chelsea was overdressed for the new century. Deserted by its tenants, it reopened in 1905 as a hotel. O. Henry moved in, starting an immigration of good writers with bad livers that continued through the residencies of Eugene O'Neill and Dylan Thomas. Today its jowlish balconies and faded grande dame elegance remain intact. A Margaret Dumont of a building, it still plays hostess to a kind of Marx Brothers anarchy: when Metropolitan Opera choreographer Katherine Dunham received Bard's permission several years ago to rehearse "Aida" in the Chelsea ballroom, no one complained, not even when stagehands pulled up in limousines and began unloading lions into the lobby.
A room can be had for as little as $45 a night, practically a third of what the uptown hotels charge. Comfortable studios can be rented for $475 a month -- cheap by Manhattan standards -- and young writers still move in hoping to bang out their first novel before their bank account runs dry. Porn stars, college students, ex-mental patients and middle-class families all find homes now in the Chelsea, moving Bard to boast, "We've got something for everybody. We've got rooms that are like what you'd get at the YMCA and suites that compete with the best the Plaza has to offer."
Longtime guests offer their own reasons for staying. Arthur Miller, who lived there for seven years after Marilyn Monroe died, liked the fact that "here, you don't have to wear a tie to pick up your keys." Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Schuyler moved in four years ago "for the quiet, just for the quiet." Forty-year resident Virgil Thomson, who composed the opera "Lord Byron" in his Chelsea suite, says simply, "I came here originally because it was cheap. If you like a place, you stay. It wasn't because of the creative atmosphere you're always hearing about. You don't have to create to live at the Chelsea -- thank God."
Protection: Because the Chelsea attracts all types, its presence is sometimes grumbled about in the upwardly mobile neighborhood for which it is named. But Bard is quick to say he's not interested in keeping up with the neighborhood Joneses. "I run this hotel for the protection of the artists. These people need a certain amount of protection from modernization. This place has existed just as it is for 100 years, and hopefully it will be around for another hundred. Every room here has a history."
Somewhere inside the Chelsea's red-brick walls, Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt slept, Jimi Hendrix and Edie Sedgwick partied and Brendan Behan and Thomas Wolfe wrung out the last work from their spent lives. On this count, however, Stanley Bard isn't talking. "I'd prefer not to mention their room numbers," says the keeper of the secrets. "I don't want people making pilgrimages here. This isn't a museum -- it's a home."