Travellers' Checks | New York’s Chelsea Hotel sells its doors for US$400,000, including to Bob Dylan’s room

The extensive renovation of New York’s Chelsea Hotel has resulted in another unusual auction. Last year, the art collection of former manager and Manhattan legend Stanley Bard went under the gavel and, now, 52 of the hotel’s guest-room doors have just been likewise sold. Salvaged from the street outside the hotel by one-time tenant Jim Georgiou, many of the doors were linked (with his research and interviews) to famous people who once stayed at the Chelsea.

Several doors were connected to more than one person, resulting in some curious pairings. Staying in the same room at different times, for example, were actress Bette Davis and singer Iggy Pop, actor Humphrey Bogart and writer Paul Bowles, former Rolling Stone Brian Jones and actor Liam Neeson, writers Mark Twain and Brendan Behan, and play­wright Tennessee Williams and rocker Jon Bon Jovi.

The door to a room that singer Bob Dylan is said to have stayed in fetched the highest bid – US$125,000 – while one shared at various times by singers Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell was runner up, raising US$106,250. Comparative bargains included former doors to one-time rooms of painter Jackson Pollock (US$8,750) and singers Bob Marley (US$8,750) and Jimi Hendrix (US$16,250). Bidding interest in The Doors’ late front­man Jim Morrison’s door was also surprisingly low, at US$10,000.