Obituary: Stanley Bard died on February 14th
IT IS a fair bet that no hotelier in New York was prouder of his trade than Stanley Bard. For him, it was a strange and wonderful calling, and what he made of his red-brick empire was something beautiful.
His Hotel Chelsea—the inverted name conferring a certain elegance—sits on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Mr Bard believed firmly that the area was named after his building, which was once the tallest around, and is on several historic registers. Its style is Victorian Gothic, with floreate cast-iron balconies, and it rises to 12 storeys of somewhat gloomy aspect. It contains, according to most city guides, 250 rooms, though Stanley—as everyone knew him—averred there were around 400. He liked to say that if it were divided up today, without the same regard for high ceilings, outsize rooms and marble fireplaces common in 1883, you could fit in at least 1,000.
The lobby of the Chelsea, which rises to a wide dank staircase, housed his art collection, including several fleshy nudes, flying papier-mâché figures, a portrait of a horse and a plaster-of-Paris pink girl on a swing. Below these, most...