103 Waverly Place
(on the corner of MacDougal Street)
Continue north on Thompson to Washington Square, then turn left towards MacDougal and then right on MacDougal until you reach Waverley Place. The Washington Square Hotel is on the north side of Waverley Place close to Washington Square.
“A haven cosy as toast, cool as an icebox…”
~from A visit to America
Dylan’s Hotels in New York
On the 1st tour John Malcolm Brinnin booked Dylan into the Beekman Hotel, on the corner of First Avenue and 49th Street. Dylan had wanted to stay in an apartment in New York, rather than a hotel, and as it was, the hotel management soon asked him to leave because of his partying and excessive demands on room service.
He moved here into the Hotel Earle, which was cheaper than the Beekman and also close to his favourite bars and restaurants in Greenwich Village. In the 1950s the Earle was a somewhat well-worn hotel, with an easygoing atmosphere and staff.
On the 2nd tour in 1952, Dylan and his wife Caitlin spent a couple of nights at the Hotel Earle before moving in to the Hotel Chelsea, where they had a one-room kitchenette apartment. The Hotel Chelsea is situated on West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Constructed in 1883, it became Dylan’s “home” on his American tours. Other famous literary figures and artists have stayed there, including O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller, Sarah Bernhardt, Jackson Pollack and the Welsh musician John Cale along with his then wife Betsey Johnson.
It was at the Chelsea that Dylan worked on the final version of Under Milk Wood prior to its New York premiere. It was also from there that he was taken, unconscious, to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he died after failing to come out of a coma. A plaque on the Hotel Chelsea reads: “Dylan Thomas lived and wrote at the Chelsea Hotel and from here he sailed out to die.”
