Remember when in December 2008 we told you that this woman was a new permanent tenant….
Now we have proof!
Living with Legends
Hotel Chelsea Blog
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The present, illegitimate, management this week began demolition/“renovation” in room 614 of the National and City Landmark Chelsea Hotel. This is the room where the great Arthur Miller lived in the 1960s, and where he penned his play “After the Fall.” The room is virtually unchanged from the
time when Miller lived there, and contains many original features. It has most recently been the home and work space of Dr. Peter Ferro, a dentist who was evicted from the hotel last year.
We feel that Miller’s room is a valuable resource for present and future generations of writers and playwrights, and that it should be preserved. Unfortunately, due to the present management’s utter contempt for history, tradition, and the arts, we have every reason to fear that this room will end up much like Bob Dylan’s room—that is, unceremoniously gutted.As was the case with the demolition of Dylan’s room, we feel that the hotel has fraudulently obtained the permits for work on room 614. In their applications for flooring, kitchen, and bathroom renovations, they falsely state that the Chelsea is not an SRO building, when in fact it is. They further falsely state that the hotel does not contain rent stabilized units, when in fact it does. This allows the hotel to avoid the requirement that they obtain a Certificate of No Harassment—which, due to ongoing harassment, they’ll never get in a million years.
We thought we had cleared up this matter of permit falsification with the DOB in connection with the work on Dylan's room — for which they issued a Stop Work Order which is still in effect — but apparently they can't be bothered to read their own paperwork.
Earlier posts about Arthur Miller's room
Arthur Miller’s Suite Vacated, Likely Endangered by Some Asinine SchemePhoto: (Bill Bolcom, Arnold Weinstein, and Arthur Miller at work in the Chelsea Hotel on the opera based on Miller's play, A View From the Bridge.) Source. Opera News.
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We're blogging live this morning from the Martha Stewart show. The topic: greedy developers and rampant
gentrification in NYC. Just kidding, folks. It's really about blogs and bloggers. We are in the very back because we ignored the orders to wear pastels. (We would put up a picture, but that's not allowed right now.) Ok. We managed to get that picture up. See how far back we are. That pad thai they're cooking really smells good from the cheap seats.
They're finished with the Pad Thai. Now they're frosting a cake with a blogger who's blog is about preparing recipes from Martha's cookbook. He's prepared 289 so far, though he claims to have a life. He has on an apron with his head on Russell Crow's body.
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Sugar and lard or pure grain alcohol. We’ve got it all at the Chelsea Hotel. In addition to Mark Isreal’s proposed doughnut shop, we have now received news that the Chelsea Hotel is getting not
one but two bars on the ground floor. All of these businesses will apparently be connected to the historic lobby: the doughnut shop in the former Dan’s Guitars space, a bar in Stanley’s former office, and another bar somewhere behind the check-in desk.
The proprietor of at least one of these bars will reportedly be Noel Ashman, who should fit right in to the Chelsea Hotel culture, seeing as how he was evicted from his last establishment for non-payment of rent. Noel also boasts his own facebook group established by former employees who claim he hasn’t paid them. Welcome, Noel. With your history we’re certain you’ll soon be meeting Belkin, Burden. Be sure to say Hi to good ol’ Smokin’ Joe when you see him in court.
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In a recently published article, Sherill Tippins traces the origins of the Chelsea Hotel’s role as nexus of the artistic community to the French utopian socialist philosopher Charles Fourier’s influence upon architect Phillip Hubert. It’s Tippins contention that when Hubert completed the building in 1884 it encapsulated Fourier’s notion of art social – a philosophical ideal whereby artists have the role of “unifying a diverse
population and guiding it forward in its evolution.” Tippins history of the Chelsea Hotel, which will be published later this year, will show how Fourier’s ideas have anchored the Hotel throughout its many incarnations. Below is an excerpt from the article.
“…. the Chelsea’s physical and economic design resembled in many ways those of a standard phalanstery, so the social makeup of its Association echoed that recommended by Fourier for a phalanx in its infancy : a central core of cultivators and manufacturers, a smaller population of capitalists, scholars, and artists for the sake of economic survival, psychological balance, and spiritual growth ; and a Board of Directors manned by the wealthiest and most knowledgeable members of the cooperative. [26] At the Chelsea, located not in the country but in the midst of an urban environment then under massive construction, the “cultivators and manufacturers” were represented by real estate developers, builders, and contractors then involved in the creative process of “growing” the city -in this case including most of the people who literally built, equipped, and decorated the Chelsea itself. The “capitalists, scholars, and artists” included not only by the painters and sculptors in the fifteen top-floor studios, but by a number of musicians, actors, authors, professors, bibliophiles, financiers, and wealthy philanthropists who lived downstairs. And with a founding Board of Directors that included a well-known stockbroker, a former president of the Merchants and Traders’ Exchange, a future governor of Virginia, and the president of the company that installed the Chelsea’s innovative, patented roof, the call for a wealthy and knowledgeable leadership had been answered as well.With an eighty-family building and a reasonably diverse population, the Chelsea stood poised to take its place, as John Noyes had recommended, “at the front of the general march of improvement.” But the question remained : how would it go about doing this ? What kind of work was to be accomplished here ?
The answer seems to lie in the Fourierist notion of art social -the importance assigned to the role of artists in unifying a diverse population and guiding it forward in its evolution. Hints of this intention lie not only in the provision of fifteen art studios occupying the Chelsea’s entire top floor, but also in the pronounced presence of nature themes in its décor-stained-glass transoms displaying images of seashells and flowers, etched-glass door panels featuring forest scenes, hand-carved wood fireplace mantels and hand-painted tiles, a lobby hung with paintings of the Hudson River school, and exquisite wrought-iron sunflowers adorning its exterior balconies and central stairway -the latter evoking a dream of the liberated American artist as vividly as Fourier’s Crown Imperial flower represented the downtrodden artist in “civilization.”
For more of Sherill's writings about the Chelsea Hotel read the "History of Activism" section of this blog.
Send In Your Abbie Hoffman Stories to Help Sherill Tippins Finish Her History of the Chelsea Hotel
History of Activism at the Chelsea Pt. 5: Jackson Pollock Raises a Toast to the W.P.A.
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UPDATE: Willem's step daughter Devon wrote to let us know that there is a memorial page for Willem at
http://memorialwebsites.legacy.com/willemvanes/Homepage.aspx.Residents of the Chelsea Hotel were saddened to learn of the passing of their longtime neighbor and friend,
Willem Van Es. Willem died on Christmas night in an airplane en route to Amsterdam. We all remember Willem as the owner of Johnny, the recently deceased Behemoth of the Chelsea, whose odor lingers in the elevators to this day. The photo is from Johnny's final birthday party.
In addition to Willem’s life work as a crafter of hand painted and hand made wall paper, he had spent the last 10 years working on a boat which he had jokingly christened the Sea-Banana. Sadly, Willem will never get to set sail in the bright yellow craft. We feel confident, however, that he has set sail on a much more joyous voyage.
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I own Capitol Fishing Tackle Co. I went to work at the store in 1973 and bought it in 1974.The Bards
treated me fairly. The space wasn't cheap, but I made a living and it was fun.Stanley and his family are wonderful people. We were all in tears when we found out that Capitol Fishing could no longer remain at the Hotel Chelsea. I moved the store for two reasons. I couldn't think about closing a business that was 109 years old at that time, and, more importantly, our son wouldn't let me. Fishing is his passion and he loves working in the store that will some day be his. Our famous sign is at 132 W 36th St. We have a great landlord and a very long lease. I didn't let Marlene Krauss and David Elders win. Believe it or not, Marlene Krauss's father was a gentleman. If he was alive today, he wouldn't be proud of his daughter. — Richard Collins
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Stefan Brecht, who wrote about and performed in the new and revolutionary theatre that erupted in New York in the 1960’s and early ‘70’s, will be remembered at a memorial to be held Sunday, Nov. 8 at 6 PM, at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, E. 10th St. at 2nd Ave.
The memorial, a celebration of his life and work, will include performances created for the
occasion by Peter Schumann, of the Bread and Puppet Theatre and, on an audio disc, by Robert Wilson; Jim Neu, a playwright who performed with Stefan in early Robert Wilson plays, will read the letter, which Brecht wrote, from Wilson’s “A Letter to Queen Victoria”. Drumming, musical performances and readings of Brecht’s poems will be part of the memorial, as will photographs and projected footage from his performances with Charles Ludlam, Robert Wilson, Stuart Sherman and Leandro Katz.
Brecht’s series on The Original Theatre of the City of New York: From the Mid-Sixties to the Mid-Seventies was left unfinished when he became ill, in 2001, with a form of Parkinson’s that destroyed his ability to write or speak. His intent was to preserve, for those in later and much changed times, as much as possible of the sense of being there in New York in the ‘60’s-70’s; his writing ranged from detailed on-the-spot descriptions, sometimes poetic in language of the time, to analysis, to documentation of the particulars of the scene that gave rise to the radically new.
Completed books are: Queer Theatre, centering on Jack Smith and on Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company; The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson, evoking the “Nothing happens” spectacles of ’69 and the ‘70’s evolutions with the communal Byrd Hoffman company; and Bread and Puppet Theatre, with vivid accounts of the protest theatre on the ‘60’s streets and the first circuses in Vermont. His account of Richard Foreman’s Ontological Hysteric Theatre is due for publication in 2010.
City Lights published his Poems; a later collection appeared in 2006, Eighth Avenue Poems, along with a book of photographs of the street pavements, 8th Avenue.
Living with Legends 