Vanished L.A.: "The Great Room"

"The great room, over one hundred feet in length and seventy-five feet in width, was a sunburst of light. Great crystal chandeliers blazed from a dozen vantage points, while softer and smaller lights were placed along the four sides of the room. ... The perfection and symphony of the great room held the guests spellbound upon their arrival. As the stately ladies and gentlemen entered the salon the pause each made at the threshold as with intense interest they swept the salon with their gaze was noticeable.” (LA Times, October 1911. Grand Opening- Alexandria Hotel)

LIKE MOST people today, I’d be lying if I said that I had had ever heard of the Alexandria Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, prior to last weekend. Somehow, I had managed to find myself walking past transients, through dark glass doors that opened into the marble lobby of a century’s old Los Angeles hotel. Built in 1906 in its current location, the corner of 5th and Spring St., the hotel, much like the Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is a mere ruin of the elegance that it once beheld. There is no flowing red carpet to greet an entrance, no butler to take your bags (or trunks), no shoeshine boy to polish your shoes and there are no Hollywood starlets cascading down wooden stairs.

Today, there are only mere remembrances of the golden age; signed photos of silent movie stars the likes of Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart line faded walls. In 1912, a story in the L.A. Times stated that, “What Union Square was to old New York, what Forty-second street is to the present metropolis, and what the vicinity of the Cort Theater is to San Francisco, the Alexandria mezzanine seems to be to theatrical Los Angeles... Hardly ever does the day pass in which some nationally-known actor or actress does not linger in the low settees or pause at the golden rail, looking down into the lobby below”. During its heyday between 1911 and 1922 the Hotel was the grandest location in all of Los Angeles. It housed a million dollar carpet in the lobby, a world famous stained glass Tiffany Skylight, and the premier Ballroom in the western United States. The ballroom, which came to be known as “The Palm Court”, “The Grand Ballroom” and The “Franco-Italian Dining Room” saw speeches by Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. It was this room where Paul Whiteman, later to be known as the “Jazz King” got his start in 1919. Charlie Chapman, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks formed United Artists Pictures there in 1919 also. The staircase of the hotel is rumored to be the staircase famously used in “Gone with the Wind”. Sadly though, with the introduction of the Millennium Biltmore hotel in 1923 the hotel slowly lost its grandeur and faded into memories now since lost. Today the hotel is a near ruin, rooms are boarded closed, nailed shut; the deep red staircase is tattered, the carpets and ornaments long since sold, and the grand ballroom is empty. The rooms that are today available, are rented as low-income apartments. If you’ve any imagination or appreciation for times past and old architecture, I strongly suggest wandering down Spring Street, through glass doors and into the Alexandria. The clash between new and old, while sad, is amazingly beautiful.

-- Greg Boss

(photo credit: Greg Boss)