If these walls could talk
Iconic hotels are the grande dames of hospitality, and continue to inspire a new generation of contemporary hotels. Travel writer Susan Ward Davies reports
The best hotels are so much more than just a place to sleep. Some have shaped history, such as the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne, where the armistice ending the war between Italy and Turkey was signed in 1912. Some have made a huge cultural contribution by nurturing talent, as in the case of the hotbed of creativity that was New York’s Hotel Chelsea. Built in the 1880s as a housing cooperative, the 12-storey, red-brick building became a kind of commune, where artists such as Mark Rothko could pay rent with paintings, where Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Poets hung out, Jack Kerouac and Gore Vidal, as well as Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen (I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel), famously had one-night stands, and whose residents were immortalised in Andy Warhol’s 1966 film Chelsea Girls. The Chelsea closed in 2011, reopening as a way more luxurious establishment 11 years later, with the final touches of its lengthy renovation completed with a rooftop pool and gym just last year. As an indication of the strength of feeling for the hotel’s heritage, the door to Kerouac’s old room sold for $30,000 at auction in 2018. But long-term fans of the old-style Chelsea needn’t have worried: the new owners, Sean MacPherson, Ira Drukier and Richard Born, of NYC’s the Maritime, The Ludlow and The Bowery, were well aware of the heritage. ‘Ultimately we were seduced by the romance of the building,’ said MacPherson. ‘We wanted to restore it, not destroy it.’
There is more than one way hotels can make a cultural contribution. In 1915, when drinking alcohol in public was a real no-no for women, Ngiam Tong Boon, the talented barman of Raffles Singapore, invented the colourful Singapore Sling, so female guests could get discreetly tipsy on what looked like fruit juice. The hotel may have been praised for its literary associations, with Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham all some-time residents, and the fact that it has housed the finest ballroom in the East, a billiard room, post office and a theatre, and that it was declared a National Monument in 1987—but the world-famous cocktail will be its enduring legacy.
Other hotels were born of loftier ambitions: Rio de Janeiro’s charismatic Copacabana Palace, now part of Belmond, was commissioned in 1922 by the then President Epitacio Pessoa to celebrate the centennial of the country’s independence from Portugal. But what really cemented its place in the city’s heart was hosting the first of its exuberant carnival Copa Balls. The very first Taj hotel, Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace, which opened in 1903, predating the city’s most famous landmark, the Gateway of India, by 20 years, was the dream of visionary entrepreneur Jamsetji Tata. Tata believed a grand, high-luxury hotel would elevate the status of the city, and his project included a series of firsts: the first hotel in India to employ women, the first to have electricity, and the first in Asia to have air conditioning. The older hotels are, the more layers, traditions, rituals and stories they accumulate, and what makes a property iconic are its memories and associations, its storytelling and character, all of which can inspire a new generation of hoteliers.
As Bruno Marti, executive VP of brand marketing for 25hours, says, ‘There is no specific 25hours hotel that is inspired by an iconic grand hotel, but when we make public spaces, we often refer to historic hotels that had an important place in society. Such hotels have real history that we try to build in storytelling. They are role models.’
Many elements conspire to make a good hotel great: location, service, design, a touch of je ne sais quoi… but the right clientele can considerably add to a hotel’s aura. New York City’s Algonquin Hotel is still known mostly for its 1920s dining club, The Round Table, particularly the sharp-witted Dorothy Parker’s contribution to it, rather than the fact it was the first US hotel to offer rooms to solo female travellers. Badrutt’s Palace, in St Moritz, could have just been another lakeside grande dame without the likes of Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich among its patrons, with added frisson from regular resident Alfred Hitchcock, who wrote his chilling The Birds in what is now named The Hitchcock Suite. The New York Upper East Side greats, The Carlyle, now a Rosewood Hotel, and The Mark, have hosted many presidents and royals, but these days are more famous for being the sleepover of choice for generations of Met Gala guests.
And no matter how high its standing, no hotel can afford to rest on its laurels. London’s Claridge’s, one of the city’s grandest dames, has long played host to royalty of aristocracy, Hollywood and fashion, but still ensures it keeps upping its game with innovations such as its illustrator-in-residence, David Downton, its ArtSpace, and recent ‘iceberg’ mega-basement housing a spa, a pool and a cinema.
The endlessly fashionable Italian Riviera and Amalfi coasts, and the charming island of Capri have attracted more than their fair share of paparazzi fodder, with Capri’s exquisite Grand Hotel Quisisana a hit with royals and literary reprobates since its 1861 opening. Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Douglas and Tom Cruise have all fallen for its old-school glamour and Liberty style (Italian art nouveau), while Portofino’s superb Hotel Splendido dazzled the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (who made his first proposal to Liz here), Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly and Maria Callas. More recently Megan Fox, Dua Lipa and Machine Gun Kelly have been won over by its pretty rooms, saltwater pool, and heritage vibe.
The Splendido was recently refurbished by Martin Brudnizki (responsible for London’s Annabel’s and Sexy Fish, Soho Beach House Miami and The Beekman New York, along with 25Hours Hotel Indre By in Copenhagen), who described his work there as ‘ just reviving it for a new era’, which is exactly how these iconic grandes dames stay relevant. Some of the new hotels of today might just be the iconic hotels of the future, but creating a legend takes the right ingredients, the right karma, the right designer and more than a sprinkling of X factor to ensure they are never just a place to sleep.
