Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chelsea as Madhouse—Really
For wealthy people with mentally ill sons or daughters, the last resort was to put them in a
mental institution. For those who weren't dangerous to themselves or others, another sort of
institution might be in order, a residence hotel where the membrane between madness and
sanity had long since frayed.
TIM SULLIVAN
TheChelseaiskindofawarehouseforrichfamiliestoputtheircrazykids.Ithap-
pens at any hotel, but this one in particular. During the seventies and eighties, a
lot of families put their schizophrenic kids here. That way, the parents could keep
an eye on them. I knew a lot of them. You realize pretty quickly that you can't
get too close to them. Often, they had some kind of family money. One such guy
lived on the first floor right over the front of the awning. He was super rich, but
a horrible heroin addict with a two-thousand-dollar-a-day heroin habit. He was a
musician with a big amplifier, and he would play up there. I think I went into his
room once—it was just a wall of amplifiers. He spent the rest of his money on
heroin. I remember seeing him fall down the stairs once. There were a lot of guys
like that.
Stanley just dealt with them.
PAUL VOLMER
Winnie Purcell came from a family that owned a department store in Palm Beach,
a very good family. She was one of these people whose family helped them out,
andshewasareallygoodartist.ShetookclassesattheArtStudents'League.One
of her paintings is in the Chelsea lobby, in the phone room. She was a really good
artist. She always wore sunglasses, and she was a short woman, attractive, and a
drinker. She really liked to drink and paint. Of all the different kinds of artists I
met at the Chelsea, for some reason it was the painters who drank the most. Alco-
hol seemed to be their drug of choice.
Onetime shepainted aprofileofthisfriendofours,Rick.Hehadcurlybrown
hair, and she did the painting in many different flat colors, like a Gauguin paint-
ing. It was beautiful. But because she had been so drunk, when I came in the next
day, I asked, “Where's that beautiful painting of Rick?”
“I just painted it over.”
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