Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)

Stay on Main (formerly Cecil Hotel, Hotel Cecil, and informally The Cecil) is a budget hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, located at 640 S. Main Street, opened in 1927.[1] It has 700 guest rooms. The hotel has a checkered history, but as of 2017 it was being renovated and redeveloped into a mix of hotel rooms and residential units.[2]

Stay on Main
Stay on Main Logo
Cecil Hotel, photographed in 2013
Location within the Los Angeles metropolitan area
General information
Address640 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014
Coordinates34°02′39.04″N 118°15′01.97″W
Opening1927[1]
Technical details
Floor count19
Other information
Number of rooms299[2][3]
Number of suites301[3]
Website
stayonmain.com
Built1924[4]
Governing bodyPrivate
Designated2017
Reference no.1140

History

The Cecil was built in 1924 by three hoteliers William Banks Hanner, Charles L. Dix and Robert H. Schops[5] as a destination for business travelers and tourists.[6] Designed by Loy Lester Smith in the Beaux Arts style, and constructed by W. W. Paden[7] the hotel cost $1.5 million to complete and boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. The three hoteliers confidently invested about $2.5 million[8] in the enterprise, with the knowledge that several similar hotels had been established elsewhere downtown, but within five years of its opening, the United States sank into the Great Depression. Although the hotel flourished as a fashionable destination throughout the 1940s, the decades beyond saw the hotel decline, as the nearby area known as Skid Row became increasingly populated with transients.[2] As many as 10,000 homeless people lived within a four-mile radius. By the 1950s, the hotel had gained a reputation as a residence for transients.[9]

In 2007, a portion of the hotel was refurbished after new owners took over.[9]

In 2011, the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as "Stay on Main", complete with a new website; its old website, thececilhotel.com, expired at the end of 2013.[10]

In 2014, the hotel was sold to New York City hotelier Richard Born for $30 million,[11] after which another New York-based firm, Simon Baron Development, acquired a 99-year ground lease on the property.[3] In 2016 Matt Baron, president of Simon Baron, said he was committed to the preservation of architecturally or historically significant components of the building, such as the hotel's grand lobby, but his company planned to completely redevelop the interior and fix the "hodgepodge" work that had been done in more recent years.[12] Beyond renovating rooms, the developer also plans a gym, lounge, and rooftop pool. Project completion is slated for sometime in 2021.[13][2]

In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deem the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument, because it is representative of an early 20th century American hotel and because of the historic significance of its architect's body of work.[14]

Reputation for violence, suicide, and murder
Main article: List of deaths and violence at the Cecil Hotel

As the area where the Cecil Hotel is located began to decline, suicides and other violent deaths on the premises became more frequent. The first documented suicide at the Cecil was reported in 1931, when a guest named W.K. Norton died in his room after taking poison capsules.[15] Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, more suicides at the Cecil occurred. By the 1960s, longtime residents had begun to call the Cecil "The Suicide."[15] RoomSpook, a website that tracks hotel deaths, lists at least 12 suicides that happened at the hotel. [16]

In addition to suicides, the Cecil's history includes other kinds of violence and disturbing happenings. It also became a notorious rendezvous spot for adulterous couples, drug activity, and a common ground for sex workers.[15]

In 1947, Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the media as the Black Dahlia, was rumored to have been spotted drinking at the Cecil's bar in the days before her notorious, and to date unsolved, murder.[15]

In 1964, a retired telephone operator named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood, who had been a well-known and well-liked long-term resident at the hotel, was found dead in her room. She had been raped, stabbed, and beaten, and her room ransacked. A man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was charged with Osgood's murder but was later cleared.[17] Her death remains unsolved.

Perhaps most infamously, in the 1980s the hotel was the residence of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the "Night Stalker". Ramirez had been a regular presence on the skid row area of Los Angeles, and according to a hotel clerk who claims to have spoken to him, Ramirez is rumored to have stayed at the Cecil for a few weeks.[15] Ramirez may have engaged in part of his killing spree while staying there.[18] Another serial killer, Austrian Jack Unterweger, stayed at the Cecil in 1991, possibly because he sought to copy Ramirez's crimes.[19] While there, he strangled and killed at least three sex workers, for which he was convicted in Austria. He hanged himself shortly after his conviction.[20]

In 2013, the Cecil (by then re-branded as the "Stay on Main" although still maintaining the original Hotel Cecil signs and painted advertisements on its exterior) became the focus of renewed attention when surveillance footage of a young Canadian student, Elisa Lam, behaving erratically in the hotel's elevator, went viral. The video depicts Lam repeatedly pressing the elevator's buttons, walking in and out of the elevator, and possibly attempting to hide from someone. It was recorded shortly before her disappearance; her naked body was subsequently discovered in a water supply cistern on the hotel roof, following complaints from residents of odd-tasting water and low pressure. How she got into the cistern remains a mystery.[21] The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled her death accidental due to drowning, with bipolar disorder being a "significant" factor.[22]

Cultural references

On 27 March 1987, the band U2 performed an impromptu live concert on the rooftop of a one-storey building on the corner of 7th and Main in Downtown Los Angeles, next door to the Cecil Hotel. The performance, with the hotel featured as a backdrop, was filmed and commercially released as a music video for the release of the band's song "Where the Streets Have No Name".[23]

The hotel is also known as the inspiration for Barton Fink.

It was also the inspiration for American Horror Story season 5, "Hotel".[3]

It was the setting for The NoSleep Podcast season 3 episode, "The Cecil Hotel", which adapted a horror fiction short story loosely based on the death of Elisa Lam that took place in the hotel in 2013.[24]

The hotel can be seen in the background of Blink-182's video "The Rock Show". The song is from the group's fourth album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001). They can be seen throwing money down from a single storey rooftop located next door to the Cecil Hotel.

See also

References
  1. "Body found in LA hotel water tank may be missing Canadian tourist". Yahoo! News. 20 February 2013. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  2. "Once a den of prostitution and drugs, the Cecil Hotel in downtown L.A. is set to undergo a $100-million renovation". Los Angeles Times. 1 June 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2017.
  3. Dean Boerner (2019-09-04). "Smaller Apartments Are Doing Big Things For Developers NationalMultifamily September 4, 2019". Bisnow. Retrieved 2019-11-15. The Cecil, also known as The Stay on Main, sits just off Seventh and Main streets. Built in 1924, it holds 299 hotel rooms and 301 single-room occupancy residences.
  4. "Hotel Cecil could finally reopen in late 2021". Curbed Los Angeles. Sep 3, 2019.
  5. Keeler's Hotel Weekly, Vol. XVIII, No. 6, February 7, 1925
  6. name=bisnow2019-09-04
  7. ibid, page 7
  8. Keeler's Hotel Weekly, ibid, page 7
  9. Condé Nast Traveler article (14 December 2012)
  10. Wallace-King, Donna (October 29, 2014). "True tales of terror to keep you up at night". KSLA News. Archived from the original on November 11, 2014. Retrieved November 17, 2014.
  11. "The 'American Horror Story Hotel' exists in real life, here's where to find it". FOX News. 15 January 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  12. Rylah, Juliet Bennett (31 May 2016). "Article". LAist.
  13. Barragan, Bianca (2019-09-03). "Downtown LA's creepy Hotel Cecil set to finally reopen in 2021". Curbed LA. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  14. "Downtown LA's notorious Hotel Cecil named historic-cultural monument - MyNewsLA.com". MyNewsLA.com. 28 February 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2017.
  15. "'The Suicide': The Hotel Cecil and the Mean Streets of L.A.'s Notorious Skid Row". KCET. 29 September 2015. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  16. "Suicides at the Cecil Hotel", 4 February 2021
  17. "Bird Lover Slain, but Friends Remember". The Los Angeles Times. 1964-06-06. p. 15. Retrieved 2020-06-26.
  18. "L.A. Hotel Where Body Was Found In Water Tank Has 'Long, Dark History'". NPR. 21 February 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  19. "The Real-Life Inspirations Behind American Horror Story: Hotel". Patriot Ledger. 20 October 2015. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  20. "Austrian Slayer of L.A. Sex Workers Kills Self". Los Angeles Times. 30 June 1994. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  21. "Elisa Lam Drowned in a Water Tank Three Years Ago, but the Obsession with Her Death Lives On". Vice. 27 October 2015. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  22. "The Strange Death of Elisa Lam". Snopes. 14 August 2016. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  23. "'Flashback Monday: U2 performs on a roof-top in down-town L.A.'". LAist.com. 23 September 2013. Archived from the original on 2017-06-11. Retrieved 2017-05-05.
  24. "The Cecil Hotel • r/nosleep". Reddit. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
  25. "Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel". Travel Channel. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.