The Death Of Tom Wolfe

I can't help but think of Tom padding around his room at the Chelsea Hotel in slippers and a proper dressing gown of the period. His affair with Aline Bernstein ended badly but they kept in touch and you can read their letters here.

Wolfe didn't know he had 18 weeks to live when he wrote this check. He left for a tour of the West and 11 national parks on June 19th. During the two week trip, "Wolfe pounded through two pairs of good pants; his beloved new brown gabardines wore through on the eighth day, and another pair, into which he hastily changed, gave out on the next to last day of the trip." The Death of Tom Wolfe by Elizabeth Nowell, Esquire Magazine, April 1961.

Wolfe died September 15th, 1938 just 18 days before his 38th birthday. His last letter was to Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Scribner's whom he had fought with and left for Harper and Row.

"...I had this 'hunch' and wanted to write you and tell you, no matter what happens or has happened, I shall always think of you and feel about you the way it was that fourth of July day three years ago when you meet me at the boat, and we went out on the cafe on the river and had a drink and later went on top of the tall building, and all the strangeness and the glory and the power of life and the city was below. Yours always, Tom"

Chelsea Hotel - Just Friends

Reprinted with permission - Click on image to enlarge


Molly Parkin
Suzanne Bartsch






Stanley Bard

The hand rail at Washington's Headquarters in Valley Forge was original to the 18th C stone farm house. Visitors loved to touch it knowing George Washington had done so. Little else was original. "Furniture from the period." "Paint shade researched but..."

The Chelsea is original. Thomas Wolfe walked through the small lobby. So did Mark Twain, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas and Sid Vicious. And Jane Fonda, Milos Forman, Henri Cartier-Bresson, John Houseman, Arthur Miller and Janis Joplin. With so many famous residents the unknown take on greater celebrity thanks to photographer Claudio Edinger who documented them in this 1983 book.

Ann Van Ess, Molly Parkin, Don Normal, Man Lai and today's semi famous, Suzanne Bartsch. I never got to know them but I'd flip through this book and wonder about them. Just as I might if I saw them walking through the lobby. There are few places I feel at home. A hotel in South Kensington. A restaurant on 60th. A farm house in North Carolina. And here.

I lived a few blocks away in 1984. I hung out in the lobby and often had black bean soup at a Cuban Chinese (La Chinita Linda on 19th St. and 8th Ave) restaurant a few blocks south. One afternoon, I stared at Blair Brown eating -- until she shot me a nasty look. I looked down at my black beans in shame and promised never stare at the famous again.

In 1992, I stayed a couple nights at the Chelsea in a $75 room. There was a TV without a remote and a poem written in the closet. The room was bright with light during the day and there was not a sound at night. I felt as if something would happen but it never did.

The summer of 2001, I proudly walked into the lobby as a prospective tenant. There was a studio apartment painted royal blue with a hot plate and a sink for a kitchen. Mr Bard told me the rent was $4,500 a month. The next apartment I saw had been occupied by Bob Dylan. A one bedroom but with a kitchen larger than the studio. It was $7,500 a month. I could select my furnishings from a diverse collection in the basement.

I'm not sure what'll happen to the Chelsea or all that furniture. I know I'll never live with her but I still like to see her. Just as friends.

Scribner's & Wolfe

597 5th Avenue - Home to Wolfe, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway & Vonnegut


Most recently home to Benneton and Sephora


Books were displayed either side of the doors


There's still history -- and make up

The Doors


My love for Scribner's comes from an obsession with Thomas Wolfe during my first job here in 1984. Bored and unable to finish 'Look Homeward Angel' I read 'The Web and the Rock' over and over while living on 18th Street between 8th and 9th.

Pages were devoted to a moment lasting a second or two, and even with the attention span of a Wire Fox Terrier on a triple Americano, I was sucked in to the exclusion of everything around me. Never read this book on the subway or train.

Wolfe recalled stepping out the Scribner doors with his first check for Look Homeward. I think it was $20,0o00 although I'm not sure. He headed north in a trance until 125 Street...unaware of the distance he'd covered. I think of that when I look at the doors. I've reenacted the journey. Hard to do in a trance. The 20 k probably helps.

I bought an autographed copy of 'Chelsea Hotel' by Claudio Edinger in Scribner's. Wolfe had lived there and so I had to as well. In 2001, I had my chance and met Chelsea manager, Stanley Bard who showed me a couple apartments. One was Bob Dylan's. Not the greatest for entertaining.