Inside the Dream Palace

Winner of the Marfield Prize National Award for Arts Writing&;Tippins tells riveting stories about the Chelsea&;s artists but she also captures a much grander and more pressing narrative: that of the ongoing battle between art and capitalism in the city.&; &; The New YorkerSince its founding by a utopian-minded French architect in 1884 New York&;s Chelsea Hotel has been a hotbed of artistic invention and inspiration. Cultural luminaries from Bob Dylan to Sid Vicious Thomas Wolfe to Andy Warhol Dylan Thomas to Dee Dee Ramone &; all made the Chelsea the largest and longest-lived artists&; community in the world. Inside the Dream Palace tells the hotel&;s story from its earliest days as a cooperative community through its pop art rock-and-roll and punk periods to its present transformation under new ownership. By exploring what it takes to maintain a creative community and how artists have enhanced and informed New York City life Tippins author of the acclaimed February House delivers a lively and masterly history of the Chelsea and those who cohabitated there.Not only essential to the understanding of this crucial New York City &; and therefore American &; cultural landmark but as majestic and populous as the edifice itself and completely entertaining. &; Daniel Menaker author of My Mistake&;With her lively Inside the Dream Palace literary biographer Sherill Tippins succeeds where other historians studying New York landmarks have failed: She understands that even the most splendid buildings are mere settings for the personalities that inhabit them and wisely bypasses rote chronology for the vigor of cultural excavation . . . The Chelsea Hotel may face an uncertain future but Tippins&;s enchanting book guarantees its renown for generations to come.&; &; Time Out New York