History and architecture
Reminiscent of the great "Spanish-Flats" which once stood on 59th Street at Central Park, this building was also designed by Hubert Pirsson & Co. It is one of the few remaining of the great Victorian Gothic apartment houses which once adorned the City. The building is now a famous hotel. The most notable feature of this eleven-story building is the succession, tier on tier, of horizontal iron balconies. These balconies, richly decorated with leaves and flowers, lend an atmosphere of charm to this high brick facade, as do the French doors opening on to them.
A central, tower-like section of the front has a high, pyramidal slate roof, flanked on each side by enormous brick chimneys. Complementing this central feature are projecting wings at each end of the building, adorned at their tops by large pointed-arch windows sot in brick gables, is a masonry bearing-wall structure, this building has some of the first fireproofed wrought-iron beams.
They span the distance between walls, without intermediate columns. The building also had some of the first duplex apartments in New York, one of the first penthouses and was one of the early cooperatives. The Hotel Chelsea has always been a favorite home of writers and artists, and many of its residents have produced their finest work while under its roof.
Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Edgar Lee Masters, John Sloan, Robert Flaherty, Mark Twain, Eugene O'Neill are just a few of its more noted residents.
Sources and further reading
This history comes from the Landmarks app’s historical catalog. Names and building uses may reflect the period described.