We’ve all stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, though most of us have done so only in our minds, through such cul­tur­al arti­facts as Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” Bob Dylan’s “Sara,” Nico’s “Chelsea Girls,” Andy Warhol’s epony­mous film that includes the Nico song, or Pat­ti Smith’s Just Kids, which tells of the time she spent there with Robert Map­plethor­pe. Enthu­si­asts of the work of every­one from Janis Joplin to Arthur C. Clarke to Miloš For­man to Dylan Thomas to Mark Twain may not know that they, too, there­by enjoy an indi­rect con­nec­tion to that New York insti­tu­tion, which has stood on West 23rd Street since its con­struc­tion in 1884. At that time, it also stood quite tall, loom­ing over every oth­er apart­ment build­ing in the city, and indeed over most of the rest of Man­hat­tan. Nowa­days, how­ev­er, the cul­tur­al pro­file of the Chelsea Hotel (offi­cial­ly, and less cool­ly, the Hotel Chelsea) is high­er than its phys­i­cal one ever was. Its rep­u­ta­tion as a refuge for artists dates to the man­age­ment of Stan­ley Bard, who …