Alexandria Hotel, News on Her Second Century

The 107-year-old Alexandria Hotel holds some secrets. I've written about the hotel's history--a rich tale, because this is a place where Charlie Chaplin once lived, Gloria Swanson married, presidents and world leaders stayed, and early Hollywood moguls struck deals, etc. And it has a ghost, rumored to be no less than Rudolf Valentino.

That's all in the first century, of course. What is unique about the Alexandria is that it enjoys a second century--in Los Angeles, that's an anomaly.

(picture at left and below are from Wikipedia, btw. For some neat "then and now" pictures, go to Bryanat Arnett's site.)

In its second century, The Alexandria Hotel has been a film location for the Spiderman movies (because it does look like New York, which has many old hotels) and has been subdivided into micro lofts (learn about that here) (I guess that means it's no longer a hotel, since ALL usable rooms have been converted).

But did you know there's another unused wing of The Alexandria, a seven-story wing that was shut up in 1934 and has sat abandoned ever since? And that wing has a new owner who is planning to bring it back to life.

The picture above is of the Palm Court, dating back to the glory days of the hotel. It's amazing, isn't it, that the stained glass survived? But as the hotel got run down, this became a room that no one used, so it was pretty much left alone--except for boxing matches.

Seriously. There's an incredibly detailed and well-cited article on the Palm Court, including a list of the notable events that took place there, on Wiki.

Anyway, back to the new owner of the boarded-up section:

The owners are an investment group represented by Nick Hadim. He is not an investor, though. Hadim will be renovating an unused, abandoned wing of the Alexandria. A flurry of articles just before and after last Halloween (2012) reported on this. You can read about it in:

• Los Angeles Times (and there's a photo spread there too)

• LA Curbed

• Los Angeles Downtown News

• KPCC (NPR)  This piece goes into the history of the abandoned wing a little more, and has a picture of the whole hotel where the wing is circled so you can see it in context. "Wing" is a misnomer.

Basically, Hadim's investors bought the wing for $2 million and plan to create luxury apartments in it. (The original Alexandria are micro-lofts, remember? Teensy. Only the very largest have a bedroom!) And he wants to add a two-floor subterranean nightclub.

My snide comment that I can't stop myself from typing: Everyone who can afford at least $1700 a month for a small apartment and wants to live on top of a noisy, trendy night club and look out the window to see people puking, raise their hand!

The new wing will be called the Chelsea Building, and Hadim is planning to spend $3 million on it. He'll have to add elevators and stairs, because none exist in this wing--which is actually an annex, added to the hotel in 1910.

Seven floors and no stairs means that Hadim's investors bought the joint more-than-half sight unseen. The first, second, and seventh floors are the only ones he could access.

The picture above at right, from our LA library's collection, shows the hotel in 1950. The wing/annex/slice in question is out of sight--it would be about 20 feet to the right or the right edge, I think.

The 35 new apartments planned will all be under 700 feet, and Hadim announced a rental price of $2.50 per square foot. All pending permits, of course. So even though the PR refers to them as luxury units, the luxury is not in space.

I really want to see how this all turns out; the renovations are supposed to be done by the end of this year.

Valentino's Suite at the Alexandria Hotel

There is a suite of rooms on the 12th floor of the Alexandria Hotel that is supposed to be haunted by Rudolf Valentino. The story is that before he became a famous movie star, he lived at the Alexandria on Fifth and Spring. He was a dance instructor at the time.

No proof, of course--no lease agreement or signature on a register. I hate to poo-poo a good story, but the suite of rooms is rather spacious and the Alexandria a first class hotel back then.

Could a dance instructor have lived there?

I got to see the suite during the tour led by Harry Medved last Saturday, when the Metropolis Bookstore hosted a book-signing event for Location Filming in Los Angeles (Images of America Series)
by Medved, Karie Bible, and Marc Wanamaker. Great fun.

The reason these pictures show no more than the view out of windows in two different rooms in the suite is that there were no working lights in the room, and my camera's flash wouldn't function. That has never happened before.

Oohhh, maybe there is a ghost!

BTW, filming for the new Spiderman movie was going on just a couple of blocks away, at Spring and 3rd. Apparently all the Spiderman films have used old downtown Los Angeles to stand in for New York, at least in some parts of the movies.

The Alexandria Hotel...104 and Still Solid

...though she's had some work.

This is in no way an ad for the micro-loft development that now occupies the Alexandria, though as it resulted from $14 million in renovations, I'm glad of that usage. And the loft website does hint at the hotel's history, with black-and-whites of famous movie stars.

Nope, this post stems from the fact that I found a great book--Out With the Stars: Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era,by Jim Heimann--that tracks movie-star hangouts over the years. And from 1909, when the Alexandria was three years young, this was where the film producers and moguls met in the afternoon. According to Charlie Chaplin, who once lived there, the lobby's thick carpet was nicknamed the "million dollar carpet" because of the astronomical amounts of money discussed on it.

The carpet wasn't the only fancy appointment. I found a 1910 Los Angeles Times article titled  "The Looting of Europe"--a report on the return of the hotel's assistant manager after four months abroad. He brought back cases of valuable wine, vases owned by Napoleon, and antique pottery, silver, Persian and Turkish rugs, glassware, and display baskets.

These two photos at left are from the Los Angeles Public Library's online photo collection, and show the hotel site in 1905--with a big ol' pepper tree being removed in advance of construction at Spring and Fifth Street. Big Orange Landmarks, (in an article which celebrates the Hotel's Palm Court) id's this photo as turning the first shovelful of dirt over. That was done by the child, Albert Constant Bilicky. His Papa was one of the partners building the hotel, the firm of Bilicke and Rowan Fireproof Hotel Building Company. Nice, clear name.

Later that same year, the hotel is shown under construction with scaffolding. The library even has pictures of Al Levy's Oyster House, which stood on that corner before 1905.

The Hotel's bar offered free sandwiches with cocktails, and actors were as hungry in 1909 as they are now--another reason the place became a watering hole for the movie business.

According to my Hollywood night-life book and an article on the hotel by Bryant Arnett, in this hotel:

• Rudolf Valentino hung out in 1918, making contacts that led to his first few roles,

• Gloria Swanson was introduced to Herbert Somborn,who would open the Brown Derby Restaurant. He would also marry Ms. Swanson--in a private suite at the Alexandria.

• United Artists was concieved in 1919 (between Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith)

In addition to Chaplin, Jack Warner lived at the Alexandria for years. Presidents (Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson) were guests, along with dignitaries such as Winston Churchill. Movies like Se7en, Spiderman 3, Dreamgirls, and more were filmed here--even some from the silent era (thank you, IMDB).  Lenny Kravitz, Christina Aquilera, Adam Lambert and others have shot music videos at the Alexandria Hotel. And now it features low-income micro-lofts, proving that one can be low-income in real style.

This last picture from the Library shows the dining room of the Hotel Alexandria, back in the day. It isn't dated, and it is not the famous Palm Court. (you'll have to go to the Big Orange site to learn about that.)

Dearden's: A Century Old

The original Dearden's at 7th and Main has been in business--as Dearden's--for 100 years. How many other businesses in Los Angeles can say that? The Los Angeles Times listed five: Philippe's, Cole's, the Alexandria Hotel, and "a couple of law firms."

(If I were one of those law firms, I'd demand a little more respect.)

The Times published a story about Dearden's last week, with a great photo collection that includes the mural on the side wall: "Generacion tras generacion" by Eloy Torres, 1988. (This picture is from PublicArtInLA.) Torres' mural replaced a 1970's one that featured the pyramid at Chichen-Itza and other icons of Mexican history. That's Torres' wife, Margaret, holding the birthday cake. He also stuck in the pyramid (in a painting over the mantel) and a portrait of Frieda Kahlo, over on the right.

Another story from the Times' Daily Mirror blog details the whole corner (7th and Main) and the hunt for an elusive, 50-year-old plaque that supposedly commemorated the birth of the film industry. "Supposedly" because the fabled plaque has disappeared. It was on a corner of Dearden's--once. I do not know why 7th and Main is the place to commemorate the birth of LA's film industry, and I suppose that's a topic for another day. The blog has nice pictures, though.

According to the Times, Dearden's is keeping the celebrations very low-key, because "we've never seen anything that's as bad as this." Meaning the economy, of course.

Dearden's Operations Director is the great-grandson of the founder, Edgar Dearden. Couldn't find anything in the historical Times about the opening of the store, but I did find a building permit issued to E. Dearden in January 1909--for a six-room cottage on Budlong Ave.