According to historian Sherill Tippins, presently at work on a history of the Chelsea Hotel, the recent pyrotechnics of Andrew Tilley are part of a glorious tradition at the Chelsea. Well, sort of anyway!
While there is no written testimony of former inappropriate behavior with fireworks exploded out of Chelsea managers’ body cavities, there was an unexplained fire in 1878, in which the building that preceded the Chelsea, the Excelsior, burned to the ground. The building was owned by James Ingersoll, ambitious furniture maker and partner of William Tweed, who had recently gotten of out prison after having stolen at least $45 million from New York City as Tweed’s partner. The Excelsior housed a city armory, among other things, full of firearms and other explosive devices.
The fire started at the east end of the basement on a Sunday evening when only the watchman and his family were there. A passer-by saw flames in a window and ran to the corner drugstore to call the fire companies. The fire engines arrived minutes later, but too late:
The fire “burst through the roof with astonishing violence, and the churches on either side caught fire,” wrote a New York Times reporter. “The congregation gazed in awe at the crimson flames shone through their church’s Gothic windows and lined its closed entrances with a beautiful light. The flames burst through the top of the steeple, licking at the foot of the cross at the steeple’s apex and shooting green sparks from the copper lining high into the sky.”
The Excelsior’s rear wall fell, carrying with it the rear portions of several adjoining houses. “There goes the explosion! Look out!” A volley of blasts from the Eighth Regiment’s rifle cartridges filled the air. The east and west walls collapsed in a cloud of sparks. The flames leaped to an immense height, revealing the building’s skeleton in flames."
The “mammoth relic of the Tweed Ring” was now nothing more than a pile of burning rubble surrounded on all sides by fire. Suddenly, someone gasped, and pointed. The fallen bricks had opened a gap revealing the church next door. “In the midst of the flames stood a marble slab, imbedded in the side of a ruined wall,” wrote the Times reporter, “bearing the inscription, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ It stood out in bold relief from a glowing background of flame, and was noticed by hundreds of spectators.”
No evidence of illicit basement fireworks play was never uncovered, but remnants of a burnt pair of trousers were found in the street around the collapsed building. And James Ingersoll was never seen again.
But obviously his spirit lives on!
Living with Legends 
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