A young Patti Smith playfully leans over a rooftop wall, her raven-black hair tangling with the wind as she points towards the stiletto nib of the Empire State Building in the distance. “Dylan Thomas used to hang out on this very roof!” says the singer. “I’m sure he threw up one too many rums.” She laughs, then turns to face the camera. “I’ve always wanted to be where the big guys were, you know?”
This is the opening of Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel, a film about the famous New York landmark. In the course of its 138-year history, this 12-storey Victorian gothic building on West 23rd Street has meant many things to many people. For Smith, who lived there in the early 70s, its wrought iron floral balconies and spiralling grand staircase signified something ecclesiastical – “like a doll’s house in the twilight zone”, she would later write in her evocative memoir, Just Kids.
