Literary hotels in NYC: Stay where your favorite authors lived and wrote
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Many recognizable names--Joe DiMaggio, Marlon Brando, Ava Gardner--have called Hotel Elysee home, but possibly the most notable resident is playwright Tennessee Williams, who lived in the hotel for fifteen years until his death in 1983. Williams wrote al
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Read: A House Not Meant to Stand, by Tennessee Williams
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Tennessee Williams' final play, A House Not Meant to Stand, is a dark comedy set in rural Mississippi (where Williams grew up). He wrote it in his suite at Hotel Elysee and it was produced in the final years of his life at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.
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On his first tour of the United States, Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas lived in the Washington Square Hotel (then the Hotel Earle) after being kicked out of his previous hotel for his loud, late-night partying and outlandish room service requests. Th
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Read: Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas
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Thomas' most famous piece, Under Milk Wood,is a play he wrote for the radio in 1954 that was later adapted for the stage and then screen (in the same-titled 1972 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Peter O'Toole). Set in a fictitious Wels
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Name a notable actor, writer, or musician, and they've probably stayed at the Hotel Chelsea. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, Hotel Chelsea seems best known for some macabre events -- like the alleged murder of Sid Vicious' gir
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Read: 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Sir Arthur C. Clarke
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Arthur C. Clarke wrote this legendary science fiction novel when he was living in Hotel Chelsea in 1968 (it was adapted for the big screen the same year). Based on Clarke's collection of short stories, particularly The Sentinel, 2001: A Space Odyssey exa
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The century-old Plaza is a New York City landmark that has been the site of extravagant weddings (Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones), Oscar-winning movies (Almost Famous), and A-list parties (Truman Capote's Black and White Ball). After the succes
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Read: In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
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Truman Capote completed In Cold Blood in 1966, after six long years of research and writing. The highly-acclaimed non-fiction novel tells the gory story of the 1959 murders of a wealthy Kansas farmer and his family. It examines the psychological relation
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The Algonquin Hotel was the site of the famous Round Table meetings in the 1920s. A group of writers, critics, and actors, the Round Table -- including names like Robert E. Sherwood, Dorothy Parker, George F. Kaufman, and Edna Ferber -- met for lunch dai
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Read: As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
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William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying, his most famous novel -- ranked among the best novels of twentieth-century literature -- in just six weeks. Written in a stream of consciousness, As I Lay Dying tells the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her
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Most of our country's greatest literary minds have lived or stayed in New York City at one point or another. And as wordsmiths dedicated to lives of pen and paper, they inevitably wrote during their time in the Big Apple. We checked out the hotels where they met, stayed, and wrote, from seedy rest stops with cheap rent, to meeting places for witty exchange amongst fellow authors, to sites of lavish celebrations of one's literary success . So gather up your book club (or just your nose-in-novel honey) and head to NYC to visit the hotel haunts where your favorite authors were inspired--you just may be inspired too.
Club Room at Hotel Elysee
Lobby at the Washington Square Hotel
Inside Hotel Chelsea
Palm Court at The Plaza
Round Table Room at the Algonquin Hotel