Living with Legends

 Chelsea Hotel ’s recently launched website featured a lovely photo of a fetching young woman sprawled upon the famous staircase.  Having apparently either fallen or jumped or perhaps having just decided to take a rest.   The sexist nature of this photo led some of our blog readers to take exception.  For instance historian Sherill Tippins wrote in to say: 

As someone at work on a history of Chelsea, whose founding philosopher is known for saying that a society can be judged by the way it treats its women, I can't tell you how ironic it is to see the image in that brochure of a woman stretched out in that sexually inviting way on the staircase. It's the quintessential image of commercial exploitation.

Decade after decade, the Chelsea's residents have worked through issues relating to women's place in society–from the first vagrant girl who was sent to Bellevue in 1884 for insisting that she had friends at the Chelsea, to the Victorian-era invalid, daughter of William Dean Howells, who died of lassitude, to John Sloan's wife, Dolly, a former prostitute saved by art, to Arthur Miller's Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol's Edie Sedgwick, Shirley Clarke, Patti Smith, and the many, many women who came to the Chelsea in the Seventies to liberate themselves.

And now, to end with this? I'm starting to feel more at home in the Second-Life Chelsea.

Strangely enough soon after this comment appeared the girl went missing. Where has the girl gone? Did they take her out in a body bag?  Or was she simply a figment of our imagination all along.  Perhaps she’s in the same Bohemian limbo as Piri’s money.  Guess the Beaver House will stay downtown.