Living with Legends

Historian and author of a forthcoming history of the hotel, Sherill Tippins writes to remind us that the present era is not unique in New York history, or the history of the Chelsea Hotel itself:

  NYC, hotelwise: With the economy soaring and plenty of freed-up capital circulating, investors started building ranks of fashionable new hotels. It became the biggest decade for hotel construction until the 1980s: 84 large hotels went up in NY from 1927 to 1933, increasing hotel space by 66%. Naturally, by the end of this cycle the supply far exceeded demand, resulting in price wars and a plunge in profits. 

Then the Depression hit, and the hotel industry in NY was devastated.  That’s when the beautiful mirrors, furniture and other decorative elements were stripped from the Chelsea, and the larger suites were chopped up into smaller rooms even more than they had been previously, all in an effort to keep the place afloat. By the time the Bards took over, a lot of irretrievable damage had been done.

The moral of the story: Plutocrats and developers can weather the ups and downs of the economy a lot more easily than historic buildings and their non-wealthy residents. Something to think about in this Twenties-type era of rampant expansion.

(My source for a lot of this: "Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture" by William Leach. A great book that touches on several sources of misunderstanding, I think, between Chelsea Hotel residents and the apparent intentions of the current members of the Chelsea Hotel board.)