Written and directed by Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt
Gentrification is the process whereby properties in a neighbourhood are renovated with a view to attracting a better class of, or wealthier, clientele often displacing the existing residents who are unable meet the higher cost of the improved dwellings. This usually applies to working-class communities but a new documentary from Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt shows the process taking effect in the Chelsea Hotel, which is often associated with Bohemian, artistic residents.
The Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan has been immortalised in poem and song and on film and is known for famous former guests as well as being notorious as the site of at least one murder. The hotel no longer accepts long-term tenants and, for the last nine years, has been undergoing extensive renovation works which, if the footage in the documentary is anything to go by, are showing no sign of completion.
There is an atmosphere of inevitability about Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel, a sense the hotel’s role as an unconventional residence/ artist’s muse is reaching an end. Archive footage celebrates the hotel’s avant-garde reputation with Patti Smith reporting it was the first place she sought out in Manhattan as she wanted to go where the big guys were. Extracts from a tourist guide listing famous former guests are played and their images are projected onto the walls of the hotel. There is footage of guests emerging from the lift to find themselves in the middle of a dance performance on the stairs, possibly not what you need if you fancy a quiet night.
However, the hotel is far from idealised- the walls upon which the images are projected are bare brick or peeling wallpaper. The corridors of the hotel look like those in a basic municipal office building rather than an iconic venue. The current state of the hotel is hardly inspirational, with rough plywood flooring and construction workers flying past windows regardless of those inside, it gives the impression of trying to live in a building site.
There is a class-conscious aspect to the documentary. Tenants who seem well off (a couple in a well-furnished apartment complete with piano) look forward to the completion of the renovations and resent delays while less prosperous tenants fear the effect of rent increases. The tenants do not seem to be thriving in the artistic environment, former choreographer Merle Lister, dependent upon a Zimmer, sits in the lobby chatting to the staff like one of those lonely souls who spend their time in libraries talking to librarians.
The documentary is one-sided in that the renovators were either not interviewed or declined to participate. As a result, an element of conspiracy theory develops with some interviewees speculating the renovations may be part of a process to get them to leave, the oldest tenant alleging efforts have been made to frighten her out, and reference being made to the former manager (who was sympathetic to the artistic residents) being ‘ousted’. There is a sense of the renovators exploiting the Bohemian reputation of the hotel to attract tourists or tenants but lacking the sensitivity to preserve the artistic features and atmosphere for which it is famous.
Archive footage shows former manager Stanley Bard explaining artists were attracted to the hotel due to a combination of cheap rooms, fun people, and flexible management. As these are unlikely to be available in the future the Chelsea Hotel seems likely to decline into a tourist attraction, which will attract customers willing to meet the cost of being able to say they have stayed in a place which once attracted artists even if that ability seems unlikely to continue.
Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel leads to the melancholy conclusion artists, like the rest of us, are not immune to commercial pressures and the need to pursue a profit is likely to result in an iconic location becoming a tourist attraction rather than a place which genuinely supports artists.
Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is in cinemas and on demand from 20 January 2023.
