A Lament: What’s Happening to Our Elegant, Historic Hotels?

Los Angeles is touted as the City of the Future, where people come to reinvent themselves and forget their past. It’s a city that caters to the young and the restless, whose patience with the old can last as long as it takes to write their latest text. Or so it is said.

But guess what? In the commercial world’s haste to indulge L.A.’s hipsters, we are losing our own rich past. And maybe we’re misreading what really appeals to our Millennials. Maybe they appreciate history as much as older Angelenos do.

Nowhere is this demonstrated as dramatically as in our hotel restaurants and bars. As the hospitality industry in L.A. modernizes gorgeous interiors into formulaic backlit neon spaces, it’s losing not only its history, but also a way of life.

Before getting to the good news – as scanty as it is – let’s take a look at two particularly horrendous examples of renovation gone bad: The W Hotel in Westwood and the Clift Hotel in San Francisco (even the City by the Bay, with its much stronger reverence for history, is falling prey to this trend).

The W had been the Westwood Marquis for 30 years before renovation in 1999. A native Angeleno, I counted the hotel as one of my favorite haunts. The Erte Room (named after the Art Deco artist) was a gorgeous, elegant dining room where waiters from a bygone served patrons, swooping in silently to anticipate their every need. The Garden Room was fabulous, with its trellises, bright colors and plush banquettes.

Now, it has its Whiskey Bar with its sweeping curtains that look like they came out of a bad Stevie Nicks video of the 80s.

Similarly, the Clift Hotel in San Francisco was another example of old-world elegance, with its French Room dining facility with Rococo ceilings and the classy Redwood Room. Now, the centerpiece of the Redwood Room is an open cabinet of booze that shows off 100 brands of vodka.

These hotel-restaurant/bar interiors are now a dime a dozen.

In contrast, there are still a handful of hotels that have preserved their past – and do thriving business with all age groups.

For example, the owners of the Culver Hotel – with its rich history of hosting many Hollywood celebrities, including the casts of “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind” – have kept the landmark building in its historic context, but have added a bit of whimsy to appeal to a younger crowd. Enter the lobby, which also serves as its bar and dining room, and you feel like you’re back in the 20s and 30s, and MGM silent films are projected on the wall to remind you of days gone by.

It’s also chic and hip and it’s packed every night of the week with lots of young people.

Another beautiful example of preservation is the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Fortunately, the stunning murals, the ceiling treatments, the Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival features have been preserved. Again, entering the Biltmore is a journey into L.A.’s glamorous past, an experience rare in the City of Angels.

I’m not saying that hotel owners shouldn’t renovate or even modernize. But for heaven’s sake, be sensitive to the value of preservation. There are many wonderful designers, like the famed designer of luxury interiors Darrell Schmitt and my personal designer Ian Patrick, who understand elegance without being dowdy, who believe you need to understand the past to design for the present

Here’s hoping the hospitality industry hears my plea: Save the past and you just might guarantee a long-term future of fortune.