CHELSEA HOTEL
222 West 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues
AUGUST 12, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 163

Down the street from the Grand Opera House was the Chelsea Hotel, another landmark of Victorian New York, which Abbott photographed the same day. Built in 1884 when 23rd Street was the center of fashionable New York, the Chelsea Hotel was architecturally conservative--its 12-story brick walls are load-bearing--and lavishly decorated. By the 1930s, it had been the home of several illustrious writers, including O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, and Edgar Lee Masters, who appreciated its shabby elegance. Abbott may have been attracted to the Chelsea's elaborate iron balconies, an architectural feature that often caught her attention.

In 1966, the Chelsea was granted landmark status, and except for a three-story-high streamlined neon sign that replaced the small sign in Abbott's photograph, the facade remains unchanged. The hotel, which was memorialized in Andy Warhol's 1966 film, Chelsea Girls, has continued to attract writers and artists.

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