BELLEVUE EYED AS LUXE HOTEL

By JEREMY OLSHAN

April 1, 2008 -- Guests at Bellevue will soon be given bathrobes instead of straitjackets, if the city can convince a developer to turn its most famous nut house into a luxe hotel.

City officials yesterday said they're confident the hospital's old psychiatric ward, which until the mid-1980s provided something short of four-star accommodations to countless kooks and criminals, would help fill a void in Manhattan's East Side medical corridor.

Originally, officials considered turning the 1931 Italian Renaissance-style building on First Avenue between 29th and 30th streets into condos, but oddly, the layout of a mental institution is better suited to a hotel, Melissa Konur, vice president of the city's Economic Development Commission, told The Post.

"There are long corridors, and the rooms aren't very big," she said.

Even though officials expect the hotel and convention center would be marketed toward medical professionals and families of patients at nearby hospitals, it would be up to developers to deal with the building's sordid past.

Not many hotels can claim Norman Mailer, Edie Sedgwick and Charlie Parker all spent the night, but the psych ward housed fewer sax players than ax murderers, said Dr. Frederick Covan, who for 14 years was its chief psychologist.

"Our patients were not normal New York neurotics, but very sick people - otherwise known as crazy," Covan said.

"Most of the names were not recognizable, but we had one guy who bashed his mother's brains in with an iron and then did gynecological surgery on her," he said.

Covan, who always looked fondly on the old building even after the wards moved to new digs in 1986, said he would love to spend the night in his old office on the ninth floor.
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"I think it would make a great hotel," he said. "I'm sure it would be a little unsettling to people, but for some, it might also be a draw."

There were lean years when the hallways were overflowing with beds, but in general, the hospital had the best forensic and diagnostic staff, he said.

Covan, who got the top job in 1980, said he doubts a suite in the hotel would be named for the ward's most infamous resident, Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's murderer.

"When I first knew I was going to see him, I was worried my anger toward him would interfere with my ability to do my job," he said. "But he was such a pathetic character. I said 'hello,' and he smiled - then he said, 'Oh, excuse me. I shouldn't be smiling.' "

The 400,000-square-foot psych building features wonderful architectural detail, although much of it is in miserable condition.

Chapman stayed in the second-floor prison ward. There also were pediatric and adolescent wards, and a violent ward "where if you weren't violent already, you would be once they put you there," Covan said.

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