Living with Legends

    It has come to our attention that the Chelsea Hotel  management plans to punch a hole through the ceiling of Star Lounge in the
basement and up through the floor of Stanley’s office (to the west of the
lobby), in an apparent attempt to extend the raucous club up into the lobby
area.

      Our main
concern at this point is for the structural integrity of the building, and
especially for the fate of the
magnificent Beaux Art mural on the ceiling of Stanley’s office, an original
feature of the hotel, built in 1883. Other original features of the office include the marble floor and two fire places.  
Obviously, any disturbance to the floor or the walls of the office
threatens to destabilize the ceiling, which likely would result in irreparable
tears to the mural, which is actually a large painted canvas that has been
stretched and affixed to the ornate ceiling. 
(As you can see, there are several matching canvases affixed to the
surrounding walls.)  Furthermore, dust
from the demolition is likely to damage the mural if great care is not taken to
protect it.

      As part
of his ambitious ten-year renovation project for the hotel, Stanley Bard had
the mural restored in 2000.  We have been
in contact with the restorer, Lisa Rosen of Fine Art Restoration, who
writes to describe the costly and laborious process:

“The painting was obfuscated with 129  years of New York City smog, soot, nicotine
and surface dirt.  The once transparent final layer of protective varnish
had also altered, turning first yellow and then brown (see photo ).  The restorative cleaning procedure took five weeks of  intensive
physical labor using ‘q-tip’s’ and idoneous solvent to finally arrive at
what
you see today.   What you see now is how the painted canvas looked
originally leaving the master’s studio before being adhered to the hotel
ceiling.

In the 1880’s the height of chic was to hire Italian artists to come to New York City and decorate the
splendid private mansions and elegant hotels of the Belle Epoque.  America was striving to keep up
and prove itself with Old World style.  These
artists were also responsible for the interior decorations of the historical
villas in Newport, R.I.. 

 
The Chelsea Hotel is a perfect example of
the New World imitating Old World luxury.  Stanley
Bard’s former office in fact had originally been the Ladies Powder Room. 
The painted ceiling, the stucco decorations and even the stained glass in the windows
of Bard’s former office reflect the suave elegance that the hotel represented.”

 
     As you can see by the before
and after pictures, Rosen has
done a great job. 
It would be a shame if this irreparable mural were lost due to careless
and/or malicious action on the part of hotel management, who might have other
ideas about what a chi-chi
club should look like.
    

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