Hotel California: The Iconic Chateau Marmont

Source: Vanity Fair; Nikolas Koenig

Hotel California: The Iconic Chateau Marmont

by SweisKloss
August 27, 2020

There has been a good amount of recent press surrounding the Chateau Marmont and how by year’s end the iconic hotel will become a private club. Meaning it will become even more exclusive than it already is? Since SweisKloss likes to follow news on historic landmarks in Los Angeles—the Chateau was designated in 1976—we had to learn more about the upcoming plans. With its storied past of Hollywood’s elite and legendary rock stars, the famous and rather infamous Chateau Marmont was designed by architects Arnold A. Weitzman and William Douglas Lee. Located on Sunset Blvd, the Chateau Marmont was originally built as a lavish apartment building in 1929. But due to the Great Depression, it quickly became a hotel within a couple of years of its opening and continued to be so for the last 90 years. According to interviews with André Balazs, hotelier and owner of the Chateau, the current pandemic has sped up his goal of turning the hotel into a members-only club. Unlike most private clubs, members will own equity in the form of property shares, while Balazs will retain majority ownership. He did say that one of the restaurants would still remain open to the public. Before this hotel goes private, perhaps a field trip is in order to see this lovely French Gothic building and admire the architectural features inspired by the Chateau d’Amboise in France’s Loire Valley. Also, once this becomes members-only, we may not get the chance to see all the framed photographs by Helmut Newton or the room suites that house vintage O’Keefe & Merritt stoves, 1920’s tile, Spanish Revival and Art Deco sconces. One of our designers at SweisKloss has been to the Chateau’s restaurant and admires the interior design. She said, “You can tell that they had a lot of integrity with the interior spaces and wanted to stay true to the history of the building. But it still feels updated. There’s a lot of layering of colors, textures and materials, but everything is still super cohesive. All the while it feels very old world Hollywood, which is inherently charming.”