The Bowery Boys: New York City History
In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. the White Star ocean liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg en route to New York City and sank in the Atlantic Ocean. Survivors were rescued by the Cunard liner Carpathia and brought to their berth at Pier 54 at the Chelsea Piers. On that very spot… Read More
PODCAST It’s the ninth annual Bowery Boys ghost stories podcast, our seasonal twist on history, focusing on famous tales of the weird and the disturbing at some of New York’s most recognizable locations. Don’t be frightened! We’re here to guide you through the back alleys … OF TERROR! In this installment, we take a look at… Read More
Here’s a few recent press and blog appearances that we’ve done in the past couple weeks:   It’s almost time for our annual ghost story podcast in a couple weeks! To get you in the mood, I made an appearance on Fox 5 News on Tuesday, speaking to Dan Bowens about ghosts at the Chelsea Hotel. You’ll… Read More
The Hotel Chelsea, August 1936, photograph by Berenice Abbott (NYPL) Inside the Dream Palace The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel by Sherill Tippins Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Few places in New York exist with so many ghosts as the Chelsea Hotel. Oh, I don’t know if it’s really haunted, but the historical… Read More
Interior of the Hotel Chelsea, photo from 1972, by Carter Tomassi Imagine taking a treasured New York landmark and slowly strangling the very reason it was famous in the first place until nothing was left of it but an empty shell. Welcome to the Chelsea Hotel, August 2011. [New York Times] You can also follow… Read More
Chelsea On The Rocks, that long-lingering Abel Ferarra documentary about life at the Chelsea Hotel that we mentioned here, is finally getting a theatrical release, making its debut this Friday at — no surprise — the Chelsea Clearview Cinema, a couple doors down from the actual hotel. How cool is that? For the full immersive… Read More
In last Friday’s podcast on the Hotel Chelsea, I mentioned a building that was located very near by called the Grand Opera House, at the northwest corner of 23rd Street and 8th Avenue. Here it is: The opera house sprang up in 1868, the project of Samuel N. Pike, who purchased the land directly from… Read More
Berniece Abbott looks up to the Chelsea, 1936 Arguably New York’s least conventional hotel, the Chelsea Hotel (or rather, the Hotel Chelsea) is the one of New York’s culture centers, a glamorous, art-filled Tower of Babel for both creativity and debauchery. From Mark Twain to Andy Warhol, it’s been both inspiration and accommodation for artistic… Read More