Sunday, March 6, 2011

Hip-storical Landmark- Birth place of "On the Road"



a little polaroid image of my wandering's yesterday..


The Chelsea Hotel was between 1883 and 1885. At time of its construction it was the tallest building in New York. It was designed by the firm of Hubert, Pirsson & Company in a style that has been described variously as Queen Anne Revival and Victorian Gothic.[5] Among its distinctive features are the delicate, flower-ornamented iron balconies on its facade, which were constructed by J.B. and J.M Cornell[3][5] and its grand staircase, which extends upward twelve floors.

Notable residents - a whose who in the creative world:

Authors
During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many great writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Herbert Huncke,Dylan Thomas, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Quentin Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac (who wrote On the Road there), Robert Hunter, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski. Dylan Thomas collapsed in Room 205 at the Chelsea on November 9, 1953, and died a few days later in hospital.[9]

Musicians
Much of Hotel Chelsea's history has been colored by the musicians who have resided or visited there. Some of the most prominent names include The Grateful Dead, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Jeff Beck, Chick Corea, Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, and Leonard Cohen.

Visual artists
The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Philip Taaffe, Ralph Gibson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peggy Biderman, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Edie Sedgwick, Claes Oldenburg, Vali Myers, Donald Baechler, Herbert Gentry, Willem De Kooning, Lynne Drexler and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at Hotel Chelsea.

Painter & ethnomusicologist Harry Everett Smith lived and died at the Chelsea in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole lived there for 35 years until his death in 1988 at age 112, when he was the oldest living man.[11] Bohemian abstract and Pop art painter Susan Olmetti creates paintings outside on the sidewalk during her frequent summer residencies at the hotel.

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