Case File
The Innfluencers
Words Jim Larkin
Seminal hotels in the history of 20th-century destination design.
1893
Hôtel du Palais
Biarritz
www.hotel-du-palais.com
When Napoleon lll built the Villa Eugénie on the bay of Biscay for his consort royal in 1855, he helped transform the drowsy fishing village of Biarritz into a posh resort town. Other crowned heads soon followed for the breathtaking scenery and novelty of sea bathing. With the restoration of the Republic, the summer palace was turned into a casino and later, a five-star hotel, all the while preserving its splendid Second Empire decor, which was much imitated by other fin-de-siècle grand hotels. Its acclaimed new Imperial Spa has once again made the hotel a magnet for the glitterati.
1898
Claridge’s Hotel
London
www.claridges.co.uk
Reopening in a new building in 1898, with such state-of-the-art conveniences as electricity, elevators and en suite bathrooms, the nearly 90-year-old hostelry assured its guests, many of them Europe’s royals, that these modern amenities “would not in the least interfere with their comfort and privacy.” In the ’20s, when London’s smart set made the hotel a haunt, Claridge’s was canny enough to respond to shifting tastes by expanding and redecorating some rooms in the new deco style. Afterward, the interiors remained largely unchanged until the ’90s, when Thierry Despont tweaked the foyer with such new fittings as a Dale Chihuly chandelier. Last year, Claridge’s unveiled 11 David Linley-designed suites, reinterpreting the traditional and deco interiors for the 21st-century.
1954
Fontainebleau
Miami Beach
www.fontainebleau.com
Morris Lapidus took the three things he’d employed in store design to entice customers—light, color and curves—and combined them with theatrically calculated, baroque interiors to create the modern American resort hotel. The Fontainebleau’s dynamic, curving facade not only caught ocean breezes in pre-central-air Miami, it also disguised long hallway distances. How people move through spaces, the effect of lighting and scale changes, the ego boost of a dramatic entrance—all of these concepts played out in the Fontainebleau’s revolutionary design. Critics cried glitz (and far worse) in reaction to this sprawling city-unto-itself, but guests—including presidents, Hollywood headliners and James Bond—saw only the glamour.
1958
Golden Door
Escondido
www.goldendoor.com
Responding to the requests of her guests for more pampering, California spa guru Deborah Szekely took her ideas about mind-body-fitness and created a new retreat, called the Golden Door, modeled on Japan’s luxurious honjin. The design, exotic for the time with its sliding rice–paper doors and Zen rock garden, became as much a draw as the spa’s pioneering treatments and slimming cuisine.
1984
Morgans
New York City
www.morganshotel.com
Less proved more when the derelict Executive Hotel was transformed into the tony Morgans by Andrée Putman. In her first hotel project the Parisian ditched traditional ideas of what a hotel should look like (goodbye, chintz, so long, bedspreads) and turned more than a 100 tiny rooms into compact, luxe oases notable for soothing neutrals, Mallet-Stevens chairs, and Fortuny lamps. For many guests, experiencing the black-and-white baths, fitted with minimalist stainless steel sinks, was alone worth the price of a stay. A hit the year it opened, this informal version of a European hotel is the imaginative precursor of today’s “boutique” movement.
1988
The Royalton
New York City
www.royaltonhotel.com
The design hotel made its debut on a seemingly endless catwalk of gorgeous blue carpeting in the witty lobby of this trendsetter. Philippe Starck irreverently reconceived the hotel as an opulent, space age refuge from reality, with horn-shaped sconces, peculiar one-armed easy chairs, and sexy velvet, chartreuse-colored sofas. Guest rooms felt like futuristic ocean-liner cabins, and Brasserie 44 became the lunchtime clubhouse of the fashion crowd. Alas, this profoundly influential interior did not survive the hotel’s change of ownership.
1998
W Hotel
New York City
www.whotels.com/newyork
The notion of a chain hotel was upended when the W brand debuted in this, its first location; today, this upscale chain operates 21 Ws in cities around the world, and several other boutique brands are soon to launch. Working with wind, water, earth and fire as inspiration, David Rockwell created a midtown Manhattan hotel that was a sanctuary of airy public lounges and spa-influenced design: A waterfall served as lobby divider, tree stumps became tables, and walls featured collages of seed pods and other natural materials. This was hardly another night at the Best Western.
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