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. It has 600 guest rooms. The hotel has a checkered history, but is currently being renovated and rebuilt into a mix of hotel rooms and housing units.
Video Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)
Histori
Cecil was built in 1924 by hotelier William Banks Hanner, as a destination for business and leisure travelers. Designed by Loy Lester Smith in Beaux Arts style, the hotel is worth $ 1 million to complete and boast a luxurious marble lobby with glass windows, palm trees and alabaster statues. Hanner had invested confidently in the company, knowing that some similar hotels had been set up elsewhere in the city center, but within five years of its opening, the United States was immersed in the Great Depression. Though the hotel evolved as a fashionable destination until the 1940s, the decades beyond saw a decline in hotels, as the nearby area known as Skid Row became increasingly congested with transients. A total of 10,000 homeless people live within a four mile radius. In the 1950s the hotel had earned a reputation as a temporary residence. Some hotels were refurbished in 2007 after new owners took over.
In 2011, Cecil Hotel was renamed "Stay on Main," complete with a new website - its old website, thececilhotel.com, ending in late 2013.
The hotel was sold in 2014 to New York City's Richard Born hoteler for $ 30 million, and another New York-based company, Simon Baron Development, acquired 99 years of land lease on the property. Matt Baron, president of Simon Baron, said he is committed to preserving significant architectural or historical components such as hotel lobbies, but his company plans to fully redevelop the interior and improve the "hodgepodge" work that has been done in recent years. In addition to room renovations, the developers also plan a rooftop pool, gym and lounge. Construction is projected to be completed by 2019.
In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council chose to regard Cecil as a historic cultural monument, as it was representative of an early American hotel of the 20th century, and because of its historic significance from its architectural body.
Maps Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)
Reputation for violence and suicide
As the area where Hotel Cecil lies begins to decline, suicide and other violent deaths in place become more frequent. The first documented suicide in Cecil was reported in 1931 when a guest named W.K. Norton died in his room after taking a poison capsule. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, more cases of suicide at Cecil occurred. In the 1960s, long-time residents had started calling Cecil "The Suicide."
In addition to committing suicide, Cecil's history includes other types of violence and lewd occurrences. It is also a famous meeting place for unfaithful couples, drug activity and prostitution. In 1947, Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the media as Black Dahlia, was rumored to have been seen drinking in the Cecil bar in the days before her unpopular assassination and, to date, has not been resolved.
In 1964 a retired telephone operator named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood, who had long been known and liked by residents at the hotel, was found dead in his room. He had been raped, stabbed and beaten, and his room was ransacked. A man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was indicted for Osgood's killing, but he was later released; his death is still unsolved.
Probably the most famous, in the 1980s the hotel was rumored to be the home of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed "Night Stalker." Ramirez has been present regularly in the queue area in Los Angeles, but, according to a hotel clerk claiming to have spoken to him, is said to have lived in Cecil for a few weeks. Ramirez might have been involved in the murder part while living there. Another serial killer, Austria Jack Unterweger, lived in Cecil in 1991, probably as a tribute to Ramirez. Over there, he strangled and killed at least three prostitutes, whom he was convicted in Austria. He hanged himself shortly after his conviction.
In 2013 Cecil (then called "Stay on Main") became the new focus of attention when the surveillance records of a young Canadian student, Elisa Lam, acted irregularly in the hotel elevator becoming viral. The video depicts Lam repeatedly pressing the elevator button, walking in and out of the elevator, and possibly trying to hide from someone. It was recorded just before he disappeared; his naked body was later found in a water tank on the roof of the hotel, following complaints from residents who felt strange water and low pressure. Why and how did he get into the reservoir, which is on the roof and can only be accessed by climbing the stairs to the roof and then climbing the stairs to the top of the closed tank, remains a mystery. The Los Angeles County coroner decided his death by accident by drowning, with bipolar disorder being a "significant" factor.
Cultural reference
On March 27, 1987, the band U2 performed live concerts on the roof of a one-story building on the corner of 7th and Main in Downtown Los Angeles, next to Cecil Hotel. The show, with a hotel featuring backgrounds, was filmed and released commercially as a music video for the band's release of "Where the Streets Have No Name".
See also
- List of deaths and violence at Cecil Hotel
References
External links
- Official website
- "Cecil Hotel". Archived from the original on December 8, 2013. < span> Ã,
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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