But Bard was ousted in a boardroom coup on his 73rd birthday last year, to be replaced by a company specialising in boutique hotels. This thriving community of artists, eccentrics and loners was presided over for half a century by Stanley Bard, a manager known for his leniency towards artists who struggled to pay their rent on time. 'There are no vacuum cleaners, no rules and shame.' 'This hotel does not belong to America,' wrote Arthur Miller, the playwright who lived there for several years. The Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious was arrested after his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was found stabbed to death in room 100. Jimi Hendrix rehearsed there, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan both wrote songs about it and Joni Mitchell's 'Chelsea Morning' gave the Clintons the name of their daughter. Andy Warhol's muse Edie Sedgwick set fire to hers. Dylan Thomas drank 18 glasses of whisky in a row in his room before falling into a coma and dying in a nearby hospital.

In one room, Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, and in another Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can't Go Home Again. It became a residential hotel in 1905 and a celebrated retreat for musicians, painters and men of letters, including Mark Twain, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams. The 12-storey, 250-room Chelsea hotel was among the tallest buildings in New York when it was built in 1883. They claim the changes are for the benefit of everyone who stays there. The owners of the hotel deny that they are driving out tenants or seeking to alter its character. The desk people are unfriendly - I think they're told to be deliberately rude.' There were all kinds of different people and they were tolerant. 'I loved the Chelsea because it was old New York, the way it used to be: a microcosm. 'The whole atmosphere has changed,' said Michele Zalopany, 53, an artist who has lived behind the famed red-brick facade for nearly 20 years and is bringing a legal action.

The Last Bohemians by Kit Kimberly