Her head was shaved on both sides, her Mohawk bleached and dyed blond and blue. As she leaned over the front desk of the Chelsea Hotel on Saturday night, her lower lip pierced with a ring and her Doc Martens tapping the floor, Kitty Ramona, a bass player from Baltimore, was every bit the nostalgic punk girl seeking refuge in a place dripping with history and on the verge of being swallowed by time.

Saturday night was, by all indications, the last night that the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street would be open to guests, though the duration of the closing, the first in its history, was unknown.

The building is to be sold for over $80 million to the developer Joseph Chetrit, though the deal had not closed as of Sunday, according to someone close to the matter, who asked not to be named because the negotiations were confidential. Extensive renovations are expected to take at least a year. The hotel’s 100 permanent residents will be allowed to stay, but they have been told nothing beyond what the startled hotel workers learned late last week: that all reservations after Saturday were canceled.

“Where are all the punk kids? Maybe they don’t know,” said Ms. Ramona, an adrenaline-fueled, self-described “forever teenager” (in her early 30s) who had booked a room, hopped in her car and gunned it to New York City as soon as she heard the news. For a decade, Ms. Ramona has journeyed to the hotel several times a year, drawn by two of its famous guests from decades past. “Sid Vicious in caps, and Dee Dee Ramone,” she said. “If I could be anywhere tonight, this is the place to be.”