The facade of the Hotel Chelsea in New York City
© AFP Timothy A.Clary

NEW YORK (AFP) - But equally effective, say legions of devoted past and present residents, would be to renovate it, as the building's new management intends.

Plans to refurbish the landmark 250-room hotel is meeting fierce resistance from scandalized past and present inhabitants, who fear that a vital part of New York's cultural legacy could be gutted along with the building's historic interior.

"The barbarians are at the gates and it’s the end of an era," said Debbie Martin, denizen of the venerable hotel for a dozen years.

The 12-story brick building, which has been home to such celebrated past occupants as pop artist Andy Warhol and playwright Arthur Miller, opened in 1883 as an apartment cooperative for about 40 families.

The front entrance at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City
© AFP Timothy A.Clary

At the time, Manhattan's Chelsea neighorhood, and particularly West 23rd Street, where hotel is located, was the center of New York's Theater District. In 1905, after some financial difficulties, the building was purchased and opened as a hotel.

Beginning in 1946, the hotel was managed by the Bard family, and until recently was run by septuagenarian Stanley Bard, who took over as managing director from his father in 1955.

Earlier this month, the hotel's board of directors ousted Bard, but he vows to fight to preserve the building's historical and cultural legacy.

"I’ve been here 50 years and this hotel is my life. I am fighting for my rights and for my people, who are some of the most beautiful, most creative people in the world," he wrote on the Chelsea's blog.

The history of the hotel -- the first building to be listed by city authorities as a cultural preservation site -- is redolent of both poetry and scandal. It has drawn greats from the pantheon of art and also drawn its share of eccentrics, pot-heads and deadbeats who frequent the margins of Bohemia.

The lobby at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City
© AFP Timothy A.Clary

Within it walls, punk rock icon Sid Vicious killed his girl friend in 1978; Dylan Thomas drank himself to an early grave there in 1953; Arthur C. Clarke dreamed up the 2001 Space Odyssey, which was realized on the big screen by famed director Stanley Kubrick, another former resident.

Writers who lived there include Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Visual artists who have passed through its doors include Christo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frida Kahlo, Willem De Kooning and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The hotel also provided the inspiration for the Joni Mitchell composition "Chelsea Morning" that later prompted Bill and Hillary Clinton to name their daughter Chelsea.

With so much history and culture under one roof, opponents of the renovation fear that manageement is trying to create a soulless, sanitized version of the hotel.

"New York needs all kinds of people, especially creative people, if it is to retain the razor-sharp edge that excites the envy and admiration of world," Martin told AFP.

The room where pop star Madonna lived after coming to New York in the early 80's
© AFP Timothy A.Clary

"If artists can’t live at the Chelsea, if instead it becomes just another theme hotel for rich bohemian wannabees, then Manhattan stands to lose a part of its essence that is irretrievable," she said.

The anti-renovation forces also worry that rents in a Chelsea Hotel with a spanking new interior will be out of reach for many of the current occupants.

"I’m ... concerned as to what will happen to some of the older artists," Martin said.

Two-third of the hotel's occupants are year-round residents who pay the modest (by New York standards) rent of about 1,000 dollars per month for a one room studio apartment.

"It’s no secret either that some of the artists here have difficulties paying their rent," Martin said.

Marlene Krauss, who played a key role in Bard's replacement with management company BD Hotels NY, said she was confident that a renovated Chelsea would maintain its integrity.

The "dual goal," she said in a statement, was "pursuing an ongoing modernization while at the same time ensuring that the hotel’s historic charm and character is both preserved and enhanced."

©AFP