A MOMENT IN TIME

A MOMENT IN TIME

The Beverly Hills Hotel.The Beverly Hills Hotel.

The Beverly Hills Hotel Signage

If it seems like the Beverly Hills Hotel has been there forever, it’s because it has... or at least since the birth of Beverly Hills.

On May 14th,1911, the Los Angeles Real Estate section of the Los Angeles Times announced a huge Mission-style hotel to be erected by Margaret J. Anderson in the Beverly Hills area. Anderson had experience in hotel management as the owner of the Hollywood Hotel.

Anderson’s motto was that her guests were entitled to the best of everything regardless of the cost. She fell in line with the Rodeo Land Company’s plan to bring in a new resort hotel. Margaret and her son Stanley had perfected their marketing and presentation to an unparalleled excellence and saw the opportunity to do everything bigger and better at Beverly and own the land, which they did not achieve at the Hollywood Hotel Development.

On May 1,1912 the hotel opened it’s doors. The majority of the Anderson’s clientele from the Hollywood Hotel came with them. There were many unique features of the hotel, including the bungalows for guests that would return every year with their staffs and children to escape the harsh northern and eastern climates.

The western face of the hotel had a trolley-stop pavilion in front of the hotel on Sunset Boulevard that was for guests and visitors to use. The hotel had a Sun room where guests could relax with a view of the Pacific Ocean and a Crystal Room that was an elegant private room where small dinner parties could be held. Numerous business moguls and movie stars frequented the hotel when in town on business. Local celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers and Harold Lloyd would gather poolside or at the various lounges available. This started a long tradition of important movers and shakers and movie star sightings over the last 100 years highlighted by visits from President John Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali and numerous others.

In 1919, Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford bought and expanded a lodge above the hotel, which they named Pickfair.

What is now Will Rogers Park, on Sunset Boulevard just south of the hotel grounds was originally part of the hotel. The Anderson family donated the land to the city in 1915, creating the first municipal park in Beverly Hills.

The barren landscape that encircled the hotel in the early years of it’s existence was barren. The Burton Green mansion was the only prominent home in the area just west of the grounds. As the first decade of the hotel’s history closed more estates would dot the hillside to the north. The development of the land behind the hotel in both Benedict Canyon and Coldwater Canyon started in earnest as the population of Beverly Hills soared throughout the 20’s and 30’s.

Editor: I want to thank The Beverly Hills Historical Society, Phil Savenick for his help and Marc Wanamaker for supplying the historical information via his book “Early Beverly Hills”.

More to come in the next edition and on our Instagram feed at levin. lon under the linker.ee bio

The journey starts with the first step...Let's Take That Step Together

www.lonlevinrealestate.com