Chelsea Hotel in New York to become luxury hotel

The legendary Chelsea Hotel at 222 West 23rd Street in New York, designed by French architect Philip Hubert in 1883, is set to be transformed into a luxury hotel with nightly rates starting at $600. The building, with 170 rooms across 12 floors, has been closed for renovations for about a decade. After the death of the previous owners, the Bard family, a large hotel group took over and plans to evict the remaining 50 long-term residents, who pay between $1,000 and $4,000 per month. The hotel's storied past includes residents such as Arthur Miller, Mark Twain, Charles Bukowski, Tennessee Williams, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Clarke, Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cartier-Bresson, Christo, Diego Rivera, Willem De Kooning, Andy Warhol, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and Dylan Thomas. Notable events include the murder of Nancy Spungen by Sid Vicious in 1978 and the death of Dylan Thomas from alcohol poisoning. The hotel was also the setting for Warhol's film "Chelsea Girls." A 2019 book titled "Hotel Chelsea: Living in the Last Bohemian Haven" by photographer Colin Miller and critic Ray Mock documents the remaining residents. The transformation has been covered by The New York Times and involves legal disputes.