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Notes

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Top

Lemon, Earl Grey Tea

 

Middle

Sunflower, Stretched Canvas

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Base

Antique Wrought Iron

 

 

Upstairs individuality was celebrated…Downstairs the joys of community were expressed…Most delightful of all, and perhaps most significant were the American sunflowers worked into the designs of the wrought iron…the flowers at The Chelsea expressed [architect Philip] Hubert’s wish that American artists in his cooperative hold their petals up to the sky.

- Sherill Tippins, Inside the Dream Palace

 

Storied and enchanted, The Chelsea Hotel was constructed in the 1880’s with the artist's welfare and potential at the forefront. A building no American city had yet to see of its kind, a cooperative living space blending financier and poet. Its hallways and stairwells were meant to function as a busy New York City sidewalk inside its monumental walls, conjuring and capturing a creative energy that could unite an entire population through its output. A cairn of change, the Chelsea has undergone brutal renovations, countless passes of ownership,  and the evolution of stories of legend. One thing though has remained: its grand wrought iron staircase at its center.

 

Chelsea Staircase is a walk up the timeless stairwell of the iconic brick monolith, its skylight a beacon of hope shining from the top of the 12th floor, illuminating the iron sunflowers down to the lobby.

 

Pick a story, play a character, or pass a ghost on your journey along its decorated walls and redolent hallways. Behind private doors a pen scratches paper, piano keys hammer, oil paint massages into stretched canvas, love is made, and lives are lived. ♦