hotels-in-the-united-states

"designed the clubhouse in a most easily recognized by the prominent turret that seems to be watching over the clubhouse and its grounds. Today, anyone who books a night in the Jekyll Island Club Hotel's Presidential Suite can enjoy the turret. Well over 100 years after it opened in January 1888, the Jekyll Island Clubhouse, now the centerpiece of the Jekyll Island Club Resort, looks remarkably unchanged. Noticeably, there is one piece of the early clubhouse silhouette that no longer exists. The water tower and windmill that appear in many early photographs and postcard did not survive to the modern era."

"The State of Georgia took formal possession of Jekyll Island on October 7, 1947. By early November, road-grading equipment was shipped to the island and approximately 15 highway department employees worked on improving the road infrastructure. While discussion of sending a work detail of 100 to 150 convicts was contemplated, it was eventually decided to use primarily contractors and paid laborers to revitalize island buildings. For a brief time in early 1948 about 30 prisoners and 6 Board of Correction guards from came to the island and trimmed palmettos, cut grass and pruned golf course vegetation. ... ... Jekyll Island State Park officially opened March 5, 1948."

"Over the club's 54-year span, several unique events took place. In 1899, the club boasted a visit by President . In 1910, a secret island meeting was held in which the was initiated. . A outbreak in 1894 officially cancelled the season, although some still braved the danger to visit. A , eroding the beach and destroying the wharf and the island bridges. A epidemic resulted in the death of a member's wife in 1909. ... The last vestiges of the club's old guard, longtime members such as , , and John Claflin, died in the 1930s."

"At the start of “Always at the Carlyle,” a glossy documentary about the Carlyle Hotel, employees say that they will not reveal anything about this celebrated Upper East Side landmark that has housed superstars, royalty and presidents. … Discretion may be a virtue in the upscale hospitality business, but not in documentary film. If you are going to make a movie that hints at scandal and celebrity gossip and behind-the-scenes glamour, then it’s not too much to ask that some secrets be revealed and a glass or two of juice poured. Instead, the movie’s director, , collects an impressive amount of talent, including actors (, ), supermodels () and journalists (), who wax poetic about the hotel’s style, Old World ambience and white glove treatment favored by the rich and famous. Every once in a while, someone hints at a great story — like the time , and shared an elevator — but it’s all setup, no punch line."

"With its storybook wall murals, nightly jazz trio, and painfully early last call, is an unlikely destination for Manhattan scenesters. But during the past week, the tiny, dowdy bar at the Upper East Side’s Carlyle Hotel has played hurricane host to droves of young downtown fashion types like, on Thursday, Man Repeller’s and designer . ... The hotel confirmed that it has seen “extra activity” due to ."

"No matter the night or the performer, there’s a sense of occasion at Café Carlyle, the feeling that this is a big night out at the last great in New York. The room has barely changed since it opened in 1955, except that back then, there were often two or even three shows instead of one a night. The martinis are still considered the best in the city, and the soft light from the little table lamps, the most flattering. The lampshades were painted by the Hungarian-born French artist , as were the fanciful and droll murals on the walls, storybook-style illustrations of children in s painting and playing music, as well as dancing bears and ballerinas."

"Of the original members of the Jekyll Island Club, almost half belonged to the ."

"... After ’s death and temporary possession by several individuals, the island eventually passed into the hands of Christophe du Bignon, a wealthy landowner fleeing the excesses of the . Establishing a plantation built on slave labor, ownership of the island stayed in the family until the last remaining du Bignon, John Eugene, after founding the Jekyll Island Club, sold the island to the club for $125,000 in the late 1880’s. The plantation period of Jekyll’s history evokes reminders of slave labor and the horrendous conditions that they endured. ... The island achieved widespread name recognition in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the exclusive Jekyll Island Club became the destination for the fabulously wealthy titans of the country. , , and were but a few of the patrons of the club. Tangible reminders of the Jekyll Island Club years are the buildings themselves, where millionaires spent the winters on the island in the resort’s clubhouse or in their custom-built “cottages.”"

"The 70-year-old hotel at 35 East has long been a palace of secrets, well before it became the New York White House for President , who made it a fulcrum of world, and possibly other, affairs. It is the grand residence where , discreetly stayed whenever she visited New York, and it is the establishment where last ate breakfast before his plane crashed. … In the annals of urbanity, the opulent Carlyle is perhaps best known to non-10021ers for the presence of , the high-end saloon singer who has served up and at the Cafe Carlyle since 1968."

"Stanley Bard, a of innkeepers who nurtured talented writers and artists and tolerated assorted deadbeats as the manager and part-owner of the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan for more than 40 years, died on Tuesday in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 82. ... While Mr. Bard presided over it, the Chelsea was also home to , the film star; the artists , (Christo wrapped Jeanne-Claude, his wife, there); the singer-songwriters and (who wrote a song about it, “Chelsea Hotel #2”); and the punk rock musician (who caricatured Mr. Bard in a horror novel he wrote). The Chelsea was where worked on “,” where wrote “,” where wrote “” and where wrote “.” Mr. Bard lent long-term tenants money and tolerated their overdue bills; he embraced their eccentricities and encouraged their cultural ambitions."

"Built in 1883 as one of the first cooperative buildings in New York City and briefly among its tallest buildings, the Chelsea was under the ownership of David Bard, Joseph Gross, and Julius Krauss from 1942 and was managed by Bard. Combining both residences and hotel rooms,it was already a storied have for artists and writers by the time David Bard left the day-to-day management to his son Stanley in the early 1960s."

"It is true that lived at the Chelsea, and . did in fact "service" there on an unmade bed. It's true that the acting legend , in her penthouse apartment at the Chelsea, slept nights in her custom-made coffin beneath her custom-made pyramid. On the tenth floor, did argue with over the screenplay for '. The list of Chelsea luminaries goes on and on. Writers , , , , , and others just as famous, wrote books there."

"For the past decade, the residence hotel on West 23rd Street, a New York character unto itself, has been suspended in a dreary state of endless construction, with a rotating cast of developers struggling to spin this oddity into an upscale boutique hotel. Even as the pandemic decimates the city’s economy, closing scores of hotels, restaurants and stores, and leaving tens of thousands of New Yorkers unable to pay their rent, the 12-story Chelsea continues to exist in a world unto itself, one that seems to host a seemingly endless cage match where the building’s roughly 50 remaining tenants spar with one another or with the landlord who, in turn, battles with the city. ... The latest plot twist came in January, when the city dropped a lengthy investigation of tenant harassment that had halted construction for two and a half years. With that obstacle removed, the Chelsea’s owners, , Richard Born and Sean MacPherson, known for their trendy s like the Ludlow, the and the , resumed work. They plan to open the Chelsea to guests by the end of the year."

"... At the hotel on Twenty-third Street, famously rundown and louche—the Last Bohemia for the Final Beatniks, our own Chateau Marmont, where drank and wrote “” and wore (or didn’t; people argue) his famous blue raincoat, and killed (or didn’t; they argue that, too) —the renovators and gentrifiers have arrived. ... But, unusually, in this case the new owners have a sense of what they own, and of its past, and so the Chelsea Hotel’s passage is being celebrated rather than hushed up: this week, a group of young players is reviving the play “,” by and , which tells the story of their love affair in the hotel, with the play put on by a group called Young Artists at The Chelsea right there in the building itself. Even more unusually, the senior citizens of the place are mostly safe. Owing to some decent social activism within the hotel’s community, the long-time residents have been allowed to stay on past the reopening—paying the rents they paid, and remaining the institutional memory of an eccentric but essential institution."

"When the Roosevelt Hotel's swimming pool opened in April 1950, the management at publicized it; it was the hotel's first pool. It lured industry publicists to show off new talent using the pool area in a background for photography shoots. was photographed in the pool, and it was reported that she stayed in room 1200 for a time in the mid-1950s."

"Opened in 1927 at 7006 , the Roosevelt Hotel was and still is a major landmark. With 400 rooms in 12 stories, the hotel was originally the home of the and has hosted countless industry functions. The original and details were covered during the 1940s and 1950s but were restored in the 1960s."

"As the movie business grew in the 1920s, shrewd businessman (1880-1981), known later as "the father of Hollywood," developed signature properties, often with leading film stars as investors, to attract tourists and others to the area. In 1927 he opened the 12-story steel and concrete Hollywood Hotel to meet the need for both accommodations and glamour. Named after President Theodore Roosevelt to give it instant status, the hotel hosted the first Academy Awards in the Blossom Room on May 16, 1929. The complex contains over 300,000 , including the original tower with its famous penthouse suite and a two-story poolside 1950s cabana-style buildings nestled among tall palm trees. (1881-1973), who also worked in and , is given credit for the hotel's design."

"When returned with the company to California to shoot all the interiors at he moved to a suite in the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown Hollywood. ... He could not bear to be alone, and if he was, he would often hang out of his Roosevelt Hotel window tootling on his bugle. He had friends with him constantly, particularly the Greens and actor ; above all, he spent endless hours with and . The three of them became inseparable during the filming of '."

"... The is only one of the unique feature this hotel holds. ... On August 13, 1991, the City of Los Angeles declared this building Historic Cultural Monument #545. The Roosevelt is a reminder of Hollywood's visual splendor from the magical 1920s and is one of the most visited hotels in Los Angeles."

"The Roosevelt has also been a radio and television studio. In the 1930s, broadcast a national radio show from the Roosevelt's Cinegrill—and in the 1950s and 1960s TV's came live from the hotel. The famous hotel has also been a location for numerous films, including ' (1987), (1990), and ' (2003). It is especially memorable in the 1998 version of , where the monster ape climbs atop while police helicopters circle the Roosevelt's landmark Cinegrill neon sign."

"A 1927 newspaper ad touted its grand opening as "the dominant social occasion of the year." "Don't wait," it enthused. "You will see the greatest number of stage and screen stars ever assembled. Among those invited were: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ... and scores of others. And most of them came ..."

"In a ceremony to mark a 1950 hotel expansion, airline hostesses added containers of water from oceans around the world to the new swimming pool, and was invited to test the heated waters. purchased the Roosevelt from and his sister, Sally Crofwell, in the mid-1950s."

"It was just after 8:00 p.m. on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and the first were being handed out. There was no red carpet, little press, and even less suspense, the winners having been announced three months earlier. The ceremony wasn't even broadcast over radio. After just fifteen minutes, the awards had been handed out, and the guests turned their attention back to their desserts. "Nobody felt there was any historical significance," recalled. Gaynor was there to receive her Merit Award for Best Actress, as it was called there, but she was more excited about meeting and ."

"often mentions , another subject included in The Sound of Silence. I share his enthusiasm for this star of silent and early talking pictures. When I was under contract to in 1929, Anita was the darling of the lot, MGM's young glamour girl. She was everyone's favorite, and I shall never forget her kindness to me. Warm and outgoing from my first introduction to her, she invited me to her birthday party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel — a dinner-dance on the famous Roof Garden. For one starry-eyed guest it was some enchanted evening."

"The interior designer Travis Grimm had two legacies he wanted to evoke in his Manhattan apartment: The folklore of his family, and the glamour of the storied Carlyle hotel. … He also leaned heavily on three items in his possession: a faded, burgundy first edition of ', that his husband found at auction, and a silver pocket watch and slim , both of which had belonged to the brothers and were passed down from Mr. Grimm’s father. In addition to the three bedrooms, the apartment has four and a half baths, a gym, office and library. … The unit is, in many ways, also an art gallery: A piece by hangs in the foyer. In the living room, there is a piece by and another by . In the gallery, greeting guests as they enter, is a massive dark-blue work by that Mr. Grimm said reminds him of his many years in Los Angeles."

"The Carlyle was the signature project of Moses Ginsberg, who was born in Poland in 1885 and came to the United States via London in 1896. Ginsberg started out in banking, but by the 1910's he also had shipping interests. One of his steamers was sunk by a German submarine in 1917. In the mid-1920's he was putting up small apartment buildings in . By 1929 he was in full swing, buying sites on the West and East Sides of Manhattan for large-scale apartment development. ... He had bought the east blockfront of Madison Avenue from 76th to 77th Streets, and in early 1929 he filed plans to build a hotel and an apartment tower. ... The earliest hotel tenants included , an investment banker and art collector who was later president of the . His collection of French 19th- and 20th-century paintings was one of the finest of the mid-20th century. Another tenant was Truman H. Talley, a director for who sometimes appeared in and narrated the newsreels."

"The Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan is known for its grand public spaces, like its two-tiered ballroom and vast lobby. But upstairs, in a windowless corner of the hotel's administrative offices, Deidre Dinnigan toils in a cramped room not much larger than a closet. Ms. Dinnigan, the hotel's archivist, is responsible for cataloging and researching more than 4,000 objects, from filigreed brass room numbers to yellowing advertisements from the 1950s. ,,, The 123-year-old Waldorf Astoria is one of the few hotels with an extensive archive, and possibly the only one to have its own archivist. But the future of Ms. Dinnigan's position, and the collection that she oversees, is uncertain. The hotel, which was bought by a Chinese insurance company two years ago for a record $1.95 billion, is to close in the spring to undergo a conversion. Most of the 1,413-room premises will be turned into luxury condominiums, with a much smaller hotel component."

"There were few finer views in New York at mid-century than the panorama from 's second-floor corner suite at the Plaza Hotel. Beyond its tall arched windows facing and , the city's premier green space, , stretched north in one unbroken 843-acre swath. Along the east side of the park stood prestigious residences and great cultural institutions, including the , the , and "," once home to a procession of opulent turn-of-the-century mansions built by some of New York's wealthiest families. To the south, fashionable department stores, and chic shops marched toward midtown. Thirty blocks to the north on Fifth Avenue, between East Eighty-Eighth and East s, stood the site upon which the would soon begin to rise. Stunning views aside, the Plaza was an ideal location for Wright's Manhattan home base. The hotel's peerless address and tradition of excellence were well suited his rarified personal tastes and exacting standards. Above all, the Plaza was regarded by many as the finest hotel in a city of splendid hotels, and Wright had great affection for the building."

"Work on the original Plaza Hotel began in 1883 using plans drawn up by architect George W. DeCunha. The builders ran out of money prior to completion. In 1888, foreclosed and brought in to redesign the interior. The eight story, 400 room Plaza opened in the fall of 1890 ... The demise of the "old" Plaza was decreed at the one afternoon over lunch. ... The old hotel had too few rooms to generate sufficient cash flow. ... New York architect, , was retained to design the "new" Plaza Hotel. He opted for the new steel skeleton technology that had been used earlier by , the hotel's co-owner, when he built the . The eighteen-story brick and marble French Renaissance-style Plaza Hotel cost over $12.5 million. The hotel had eight hundred rooms and five hundred baths when it opened in the fall of 1907. It had centrally controlled electric clocks and telephones in every room. The public area had crystal chandeliers, marble fireplaces and staircases, and no end of elegant appointments."

"... Growing up in New York, with s at the Plaza from a very early age, my appreciation of the past and even my feeling for New York is undoubtedly conditioned by associations with that solid structure. I did not learn until years after those teas that the architect was and the date of its construction 1907, and that it was a high point of , inside and out. ... Although it is an official New York City landmark, the has jurisdiction only over what happens to its exterior. What is going on inside, where the interiors were of a piece, or to be more elegant, de l'epoque, is a kind of creeping, crawling bad taste in which even the authentic is being made to look fake. Through atrociously ill‐advised remodeling, touted as the hotel's entry into the 1970's, the Plaza is being adulterated to look and feel like any number of other older big city hotels of residual grandeur, cheapened with tricksy restaurants full of familiar and rather loathesome design gimmicks and arch menus and publicity to match."

"In its eighty-plus years, the Plaza has had seven owners. The United States Realty and Improvement Company, whose construction subsidiary built it, owned it until 1943. then ran it until 1953. The Boston industrialist owned it up to 1958; then , a New York lawyer and realty investor, had it fleetingly before Sonnabend repurchased it. The ... took over the hotel in 1975 ... A partnership made of the of , and the bought it in January 1988 for about $300 million but barely had time to take a get-acquainted tour of the place before agreeing to sell it for a quick and handsome profit to the casino operator and real estate wheeler-dealer , who paid a rather exorbitant $390 million."

"Originally built in 1907 and added to in 1921, the Plaza Hotel has long been one of the most famous hotels in the city. The 20-floor building rises 280 high. With its addition, it has 1,098 guest rooms and 12 elevators. ... the Plaza is located on between Fifty-eighth and s at the , adjacent to the southeast corner of . It was designed by , who also created the famous on where lived. The Plaza Hotel has been seen in numerous movies and is the setting of the famous Eloise series of children's books. It was recently renovated and turned into a combination hotel/residential space."

"This new 18-story Plaza was indeed a skyscraper. Like the new 42-story when in was built at and in 1931. The Plaza offered unobstructed views of both the and s. From the top of its you had a wonderful view on clear moonlit nights of the torch of the far to the South in ."

"The oft-married American actress , who became a household name in the 1890s for her delightful performances at “Lady Teazle” and other musical comedies of the day, was frequently a luncheon guest of at the Plaza. But she didn't come alone. She wheeled up to the hotel's steps on her diamond-studded bicycle which a few years earlier had helps her shed nearly 30 pounds of her ample girth. She usually left her bejeweled bicycle with the doorman, who put it behind lock and key in a luggage room to the right of the entrance."

"... the legendary Sapphire Suite of The Drake .. was used for decades to accommodate visiting royalty and other notables. Among the past occupants of the suite were of the United Kingdom, of Japan, of Sweden, and and his aunt of the United Kingdom."

"New York food critic stays at the Drake while plotting the downfall of rival in ' (1997). In the dark social satire ' (1983), and drink pricey hot chocolates in the Drake's Palm Court while waiting to confront high-priced call girl . Unfortunately for the three of them, Guido the killer pimp () is also there, flashing his nasty smile and a nastier gun. Scenes from the bland basketball drama (1991) were also shot here, as well as footage for the (1980) and the made-for-television movie ' (1988). The Drake played a climatic role in (1992)."

"The Drake's first owners were brothers and , also owners and managers of the . With the city's most prominent hotels at either end of (both designed by ), it seemed as though the Drakes encompassed the social, commercial, and political life of Chicago. As one of the grandest of Chicago's palace hotels, the Drake continues to play host to dignitaries, celebrities, and citizens alike."

"1929 — Chicago's cultural hotspot is a place called The Drake Hotel. The Drake was a residential hotel for the elite, part of the , the greatest concentration of wealth in Chicago. The Gold Coast was cheek by jowl with a slum, Little Hell, the greatest concentration of poverty in Chicago."

"How could one tell the story of the without evoking the Waldorf-Astoria? This seems almost impossible, as both edifices shared a site, at the corner of and Thirty-Fourth Street. This site, originally occupied by a small farm when it was bought by in 1827, has played a major role in the evolution of New York ... in the 1850s, had her mansion built on half the site, and she would organize lavish balls for the city's wealthy families, known as the . In 1893, her nephew, , erected on the other half of the site the , to which Caroline Astor replied in 1895 with the demolition of her own house, and the erection of her hotel, the . In 1897, the two hotels merged to become the prestigious Waldorf-Astoria. Thirty years later, the hotel aging and the price of land soaring, the Astors agreed to sell the whole site to real estate developers and decided to build a new Waldorf-Astoria uptown."

"The Peacock Alley Restaurant is an extension of the Waldorf's plush lobby, and it is lovely: filled with art deco treasures, ceilings etched with glass panels, patterned parquet floors, and murals of white peacocks. The walls are covered with French walnut burl s inlaid with ebony. The pillars are Moroccan marble, and the ceiling and cornices are covered in gold and silver leaf. ... Peacock Alley was the name given to a 300-foot-long corridor with amber marble and mirrored walls that connected two hotel buildings owned by 's great-grandsons, the feuding Astor cousins, and . It was a place to see and be seen. On weekends, up to 36,000 men and women walked the alley, admiring themselves and one another in the mirrors, prompting the name "Peacock Alley" as a description of the strutting to and fro. The Peacock Alley Restaurant was named for that famous corridor."

"... one of the most marvelous, I think, features of the Waldorf-Astoria is the use of nickeled throughout."

"The hyphenated Waldorf-Astoria was actually two interconnected Astor family hotels. Both were the work of New York architect, , who designed them in the German Renaissance style. The twelve-story Waldorf was built in 1893 by . It was soon dwarfed and enfolded by the adjacent L-shaped sixteen-story Astoria, built by William's cousin, the former . The hotels were joined in 1897. A nasty, long-running fight between Caroline and William led her to instruct Hardenbergh to design the Astoria so that it could be sealed off from the Waldorf at each floor."

"... In the record three-week-long on-site auction that followed the closing, souvenir collectors, sentimentalist, antiquarians, and dealers bid on more than twenty thousand lots of hotel property. ... The world-famous name "Waldorf-Astoria," which encapsulated the history of both an era and a dynasty, went for a token $1 to the builders of a new and otherwise unrelated hotel going up on Park Avenue. By February 1930 's great building, one of the architectural wonders of Manhattan, had been leveled."

"The hotel — an masterpiece by on in — always had a residential component: It was home to everyone from Cole Porter, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and the and to Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The building’s exterior was designated a landmark by the in 1993 and parts of its interior were designated by the same body in 2017. ... The hotel was sold for $1.95 billion in 2014 by , its previous owner, to , a Chinese company that closed the building in 2017 to restore and renew it, aiming to reopen it in four years. But the Chinese government seized control of Anbang in 2018, sending its chairman to prison for fraud, and created the Daija Insurance Group in 2019 to assume control over Anbang’s assets. Daija now owns the hotel and residences."

"Architect returned to design the bigger, grander Astoria, a task he fulfilled with considerable aplomb. Rising to a height of 18 stories and stretching 350 along West Thirty-fourth Street, it reduced the neighboring Waldorf to the status of poor relation. A mammoth cliff of dark red brick topped by a three-story , the new Astoria dominated the view for blocks up and down , its sheer magnitude setting a new standard for grand hotels of the coming century."

"Ray and I regarded our new acquisition as an investment, nothing more. It wasn't until Ray moved in and the renovation began that our thinking began to change. The Marmot, we discovered, was a most friendly castle. The atmosphere was warm and genuinely real. We fell in love with the place. As the months passed, we met many of the Marmont's guests. There were regulars, wonderful people, like , , , , , , , , , , and ."

"In October 1932, Los Angeles newspapers carried accounts of the Chateau Marmont for $750,000 cash* to , one of the men who had built from scratch the that would help define for the world. * Approximately $13.977 million in 2019"

"The story of Chateau Marmont parallel the story of Hollywood so thoroughly as to be inseparable from it: the , the , the , the influx of , the , the , the upsurge, and the current mingling of film and ."

"From to , to , to , to , Chateau Marmot has drawn the most iconoclastic and outlandish personalities from the worlds of film, music, and other creative arts. It has been the site of wild parties and scandalous liaisons, of creative breakthroughs and marital breakdowns, of one-night stands and days-long parties, of famous triumphs and untimely deaths."

"A month after buying the property with business partner Karl Kantarjian, Sarlot moved in and oversaw its renovation over the next few years. The walls and floors were redone, tacky plastic fixtures were banished, pilfered antiques were replaced, and the pool was rebuilt. The new owners also added more guest bungalows, including the one where actor would later be found dead. ... The most notorious event in the Marmont’s history occurred in 1982, when Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose in Bungalow 3. When the news broke, Sarlot was having lunch with Kantarjian in and rushed back to the hotel. “It was bedlam,” he said in his book. “The place was swarming with outsiders,” not only police but reporters and scores of curiosity-seekers. ... After Belushi’s death, the worst experience Sarlot may have had at his beloved hotel occurred in 1984, when he saw a copy of author ’s newly published biography of the comic actor, “.” On the inside flap, Woodward had written that Belushi died “in a seedy hotel bungalow off .” Sarlot and Kantarjian sued Woodward’s publisher for $18 million in damages. Woodward subsequently apologized, explaining that he had been referring to the squalid state of Belushi’s room on the day he died, not the hotel itself. The lawsuit was dropped."