Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll find out about a famous neon sign that is about to be auctioned. We’ll also get details on raids by federal agents who seized the cellphones of several top officials in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.
Once they spelled the name of a hotel that the singer Patti Smith and the artist Robert Mapplethorpe lived in and that she called “eccentric and damned.”
That was when the tallish neon letters reigned, spelling the name of Hotel Chelsea in brighter-than-bright reds and whites.
Now an auctioneer plans to sell them: the letters from the word “hotel” one by one, and the name “Chelsea” as a single piece. In preparation for the auction, he shoehorned an H from “hotel” into his office on the Upper East Side.
“That sign beckoned to the world that this was a place of free thought, creative goings-on, a raucous lifestyle,” said the auctioneer, Arlan Ettinger. “When you said ‘the Chelsea,’ you had these visions of Warhol and Arthur Miller and Bob Dylan, all hanging out.”
Or maybe Tennessee Williams and Jon Bon Jovi, who occupied the same room on the fifth floor — at different times.
Or maybe the artist Jackson Pollock, dribbling paint on a canvas spread across the floor of his room.
Or maybe the ghost that the actor Michael Imperioli reported seeing in the corridor when he lived on the eighth floor.
The sign had an east face and a west face, so there are two sets of letters and two “Chelseas.” They were taken down as the once elegantly shabby hotel was refurbished several years ago, and new neon letters took their place.
The sale will be the second auction of items from the Chelsea run by Ettinger and his auction house, Guernsey’s. The first, in 2018, sold doors from some of the rooms at the hotel, like Room 126, where Bette Davis and Iggy Pop stayed at different times.
This time around, a preview exhibition at the hotel will be open to the public on Sept. 22 and 23. Besides the neon letters, Ettinger is selling about 20 stained-glass windows that were removed from the hotel when it was renovated, along with the original neon sign from El Quijote, the venerable Spanish restaurant in the Chelsea. Also on the bill is memorabilia from the downtown Manhattan of the 1970s and 1980s, including the drums from an early appearance by Madonna at CBGB and portraits by Jean-Michel Basquiat of Warhol and Keith Haring.
The Chelsea dates to the 1880s, and, as Norval White and Elliot Willensky wrote in “The A.I.A. Guide to New York City,” “its style is hard to pin down.”
For New Yorkers who care little about the difference between Queen Anne and Victorian, the Chelsea was defined by the sign. It spanned at least three stories. Each letter in “hotel” is about five feet tall. The word “Chelsea” is 93 inches wide and not quite four feet tall. Ettinger called them “working works of art” because they have been rewired to run on house current. A studio and gallery called Let There Be Neon did the rewiring and added a dimmer.
Thomas Rinaldi, the author of “New York Neon,” said the sign arrived at the Chelsea in 1949 and was at least the third illuminated sign at the hotel. The earlier ones had been lit by incandescent bulbs.
“As the years wore on,” he wrote, “mainstream hotels did away with signs like these, leaving them to become associated with less reputable establishments that eventually developed into flop joints, drug dens and whorehouses.”
As neon hotel signs disappeared, “the Chelsea’s stood out as a relic that embodied the spirit of the hotel’s legendary inhabitants, from Bob Dylan to Dylan Thomas to Thomas Wolfe, not in that order.” He said he had read “On the Road,” by a famous Chelsea habitué, and appreciated Jack Kerouac’s eye for neon signs.
Rinaldi not only has an eye for neon signs, he has an ear for them. “There’s the buzz,” he said, “a science-experiment Frankenstein sound.”
Except that at the Chelsea, “the sign’s so high up can’t really hear it buzzing from the sidewalk,” he said. “But I bet from those balconies, you could hear it.”
Weather
Prepare for a chance of showers on a partly sunny day in the high 70s. At night it’s mostly cloudy, with temperatures in the high 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
The latest New York news
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A real estate boom and chemical plume: Dozens of new buildings are going up along the polluted Gowanus Canal. The discovery of an underground chemical plume hasn’t slowed the development.
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Illegal police stops: A court-appointed monitor found that officers, including those in anti-gun units revived by Mayor Eric Adams, are stopping, frisking and searching too many people illegally.
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Subway shooting: A 47-year-old man was fatally shot in the head inside the Rockaway Avenue train station in Brooklyn, the police said.
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First day of school in photos: Students at New York City public schools started class on Thursday, some in brand-new schools or buildings.
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Migrants have been a “godsend”: The schools chancellor, David Banks, said that the influx of homeless migrants has helped schools that were losing students.
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The secrets of an unassuming state official: Linda Sun, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Kathy Hochul, used her growing influence to push the interests of the Chinese government, federal prosecutors say.
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Row Z at the U.S. Open: Two New York Times reporters climbed their way to the nosebleed sections of Arthur Ashe Stadium, where they met dedicated tennis fans.
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What we’re watching: The Times’s police bureau chief, Maria Cramer, will discuss the city’s migrant crisis on “The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. [CUNY TV]
U.S. agents seize top city officials’ phones
Federal agents seized the phones of several top officials in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams, including the police commissioner, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The agents also searched one home, the people said.
The nature of the investigations was unclear. It appeared that there was an investigation involving senior City Hall officials as well as one that touched on the police commissioner, Edward Caban, the people said. Those inquiries are not related to a separate corruption investigation that is focused on the mayor and his campaign fund-raising, some of the people said.
None of the officials have been accused of a crime. Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, the schools chancellor David Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III, who is David’s brother; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
Wright and David Banks’s residence was one of the homes searched. Another is the home of Terence Banks, a consultant who is a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks. Terence recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Tarik Sheppard, the Police Department’s top spokesman, said he could not confirm that the agents had subpoenaed Caban’s phone, but said that the agency would cooperate with the investigation.
METROPOLITAN diary
Train pals
Dear Diary:
For nearly 10 years, an older man and I exchanged greetings on the F train as we both got off at Avenue X in Brooklyn.
I worried about him during the pandemic and was so happy when I saw him again after I returned to commuting.
We always chatted about the weather and compared notes about our “arthur-it is.” But I never knew his name.
Recently, he told me he would be retiring in a few days. We walked down the stairs to the street together. I seized the moment, finally introducing myself.
His name? Lloyd.
Happy Retirement, Lloyd! I’ll miss your smile and your gravelly voice.
— Kathy Giaimo
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post You Can Buy a Piece of the Famous Hotel Chelsea Sign appeared first on New York Times.
