Photo exhibit explores Manhattan’s Hotel Chelsea

Steven F. Dansky

In addition to photographing public spaces, Dansky gained access to areas not open to the public to produce his Chelsea Hotel exhibit.

By Mark Adams

Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010 | 5:01 p.m.

What do Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Mark Twain and Madonna have in common? The answer: a connection to New York City’s Hotel Chelsea.

The famed Manhattan property first opened its doors in 1884 as a cooperative apartment house and has been an artists’ refuge almost from its inception. Photographer Steven F. Dansky, who lived three blocks away in the 1960s, revisited the hotel to produce his latest exhibit, Shelter From the Storm: The Chelsea Hotel, which opens at First Friday.

“I think the halls of the Chelsea Hotel echo the history. … You feel the people that have passed through there,” Dansky says. While staying there for two nights, the photographer captured the hotel’s public spaces of course, but also gained access to private studios and the rooftop. “In the images that I have taken, I tried to elicit … what the history was,” Dansky says. “I tried to give the flavor of the hotel.”