The Guardian of the Chelsea Hotel

At Manhattan’s fabled artists' enclave, new owners are determined to turn the page on a bohemian past. But for one longtime employee, the hotel’s rock stars, icons and ghosts will always live on.

Photos by Jackie Snow

“If you’re walking down past the room and you take a deep breath,” Jerry Weinstein recalls, pausing for emphasis, “you would be high before you got to your room.” He sighs, shaking his head. “That was always a problem.”

“I can’t think of the name,” he says of the culprit behind the haze. “Jerry something, he was a very talented guy. He had some kind of Hispanic name, you know, he was in that band.” After a few minutes, he comes to the conclusion that it was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead who was responsible for smoking up the hallway.

But Weinstein has no problem with rock stars. It was the fans who really drove him crazy.

“They had a following. Two people, three people would rent the room, and then you ended up with forty. They brought dogs too. All sorts of animals.”

That’s par for the course when you’re working the front desk at the Chelsea Hotel and Jerry Garcia has booked a few nights.