The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division is a wonderful resource for locating images. Was this 1938 photo of  Thomas Wolfe taken in the Chelsea? The date coincides with Wolfe’s tenure at the hotel. The LOC was unable to find any documentation regarding the location of the setting.  The photographer, Carl Van Vechten, was…

Dylan Thomas is being brought back to life in the form of a 3D moving image created using his death mask. The image does capture a certain pickled quality.   R – Tennessee Williams attending 1953 funeral service for Dylan Thomas.

The recent unearthing of an unpublished play by Jack Kerouac and an unpublished poem by the then student Tennessee Williams has inspired me to be less annoyed by my boyfriend’s obsession with rooting through the trash at the Chelsea.  Here are his "literary" finds todate: Outtakes and/or duplicates from Doris Chases’ video The Chelsea. A…

Maud Newton has an interesting post about the controversy surrounding the authenticity of former Chelsea author Nabokov’s Lolita.  Maurice Girodias, the publisher of Lolita, and many other important books, also lived at the Chelsea.  An article published in The Nation in 2004 suggests that Girodias may have been Valerie Solanas’ original target, afterall he was…

The Chicago Tribune sheds light on the death of Dylan Thomas courtesy of a waiter at the White Horse Tavern.  "No one, for example, seems to know exactly what happened to Dylan Thomas on that July night in 1953 when the poet stepped out of the White Horse Tavern at Hudson Ave. and 11th Street…

In a recent review, Robin Schroffel of the Edmonton Sun calls Legend of a Rock Star: The Last Testament of Dee Dee Ramone, "heart-wrenching."

I’ve added some rather interesting links to the site lately. For example, an image of a check written by Thomas Wolfe to the Hotel Chelsea on May 7, 1938 in the amount of $10.00.  I can’t read the notation on the check, but I don’t think it was for rent.    I e-mailed the proprietor…

I came home last Friday night (April 15) to find hundreds of firefighters rushing into the hotel. My neighbors had gathered in the lobby and were bonding with the tourists around this unplanned entertainment.  The tourists wondered if they would get a discount for the inconvenience.  Not on your life we assured them.  You’ll pay…

Former Chelsea resident and author of the notorious Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, was born on this day in 1899.