How a homeless man saved Chelsea Hotel』s historic artifacts

Left: The door to the Chelsea Hotel room that was at various timesoccupied by Bob Marley (pictured), Bob Dylan and Lee Jaffee. Right:Andy Warnol (pictured) and Edie Sedgwick each lived in the roombehind this door.

One hotel』s trash could be many a history buff』s treasure.

On Thursday, Guernsey』s will auction off 55 individual doorsfrom the Chelsea Hotel rooms where Joni Mitchell, W.E.B. Du Bois,Jackson Pollock and others once lived, after a homeless man rescuedthem from the garbage heap.

「I was shocked,」 Jim Georgiou tells The Post of finding thedoors in 2012, when they were chucked to the curb during thehotel』s still-ongoing renovation. 「These doors obviously have anamazing history.」

A few years after salvaging them and hauling them to a friend』sstorage unit, Georgiou called Guernsey』s, which has a reputationfor outside-the-box sales. The doors are expected to fetch anywherefrom $1,000 to $50,000 each, with half the net proceeds going toCity Harvest (which provides food for homeless and hungry NewYorkers) and the rest to Georgiou.

Georgiou, 60, is no longer homeless, and now lives in asingle-occupancy room near the Chelsea, where he himself was once aresident. From 2002 to 2011, the Massachusetts native andthen-martial-arts-instructor lived in No. 225 — a worn-out,paint-chipped suite with no bathroom — where Bob Dylan residedduring his second stint at the hotel, between 1968 and 1972.

Georgiou was often behind on rent, and in 2011, a few yearsafter new owners took over the hotel, he and his dog, Teddy, wereevicted. The pair slept outside the hotel on West 23rd Street,hawking vinyl records on the sidewalk during the day. But Georgioustayed friends with many of the old tenants, using the hotel』sbathroom and showers and gossiping with the construction workersdoing renovations. That』s how he got the tip about the doors.

「A couple friends of mine helped me — one had a truck,」 saysGeorgiou of the clandestine rescue operation. 「We were only able tosave a portion.」

The doors sat in a Bronx storage facility for five years, whileGeorgiou spent hours at the library, researching the hotel. He wasable to connect 22 of the 55 doors with celebrities, including1960s It girl Edie Sedgwick, who nearly set the hotel on fire aftershe fell asleep with candles lit. (That same room she was in wasalso where Andy Warhol filmed his avant-garde classic 「ChelseaGirls.」) Another door led to the room where Jack Kerouac typed out「On the Road」 in one single scroll, and a third to Madonna』s digsin the early 』80s, to which she returned in 1994 to shoot hererotic picture book 「Sex.」

All of the doors sold will come with a certificate ofauthentication and information on the person or people who livedbehind them.

「The hotel was an incredible place, filled with creativepeople,」 says Georgiou, who still sells records outside the hotel.He hopes people will recognize 「the importance of these doors [and]what the legacy of the Chelsea meant.」