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 Yorker

Since 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