Generally a good hotel of any size will have one or more restaurants, ballrooms, and or meeting rooms, and the kitchens to support them. But when a hotel declines over the decades, like the Rosslyn of Los Angeles has, and the clientele changes from businessmen on expense accounts and well heeled tourists to people down on their luck, happy to have a roof over their heads for one night, obviously at some point they stop using the dining room. So, what happens that space, and the other public areas?
The story of the Rosslyn is interesting. The link is their dining room menu from 1904. In 1970 it was still a fairly good hotel, and IIRC the out-of-town cast members of the film Myron Breckinridge stayed there while it was being made. There was an article in the L.A. Times a few years ago about a barely successful actress who was in the movie, and thrilled to be staying on the same floor with Mae West. Fast forward, thirty years, and that same actress was virtually homeless, addicted to alcohol and drugs, and, according to the article was happy to be able to afford a room at the Rosslyn for just that night!
Nowadays, of course, the Rosslyn is a typically scary bad hotel, with signs in the lobby prohibiting drug use or prostitution in the rooms. Of the convivial spaces of its former life there is surely no sign. I’d go and take a look, but it’s the sort of place people are scared to go in if they don’t have to.
I love Lileks’ epic tale of the Gobbler, but that’s not quite the same sort of thing. Note, if you do a Google search on the Gobbler you can find some reports and pictures by people who visited in its last years.
I was at the Gobbler just a few years ago myself. I had no idea it was anything but a rotating bar – and it was still tragic just seeing that and the exterior. Proves how observant I was that day, hmm? Good thing I wasn’t designated driver.
Hotels decline for many reasons:
-the area goes downhill
-the owners don’t maintain the place, and patrons stop coming
-the region becomes unpopular
But, hotels can come back to life. Take South Beach, Miami. On Ocean Drive, there are the “Art Deco” hotels-in the 1930’s, these were some of the classiets places in the USA. later, the atrea went into a big decline-by the 1980’s, many were abandoned and empty. Now, the place has been revived (big time). Those hotels that once housed rats and pigeons now sport $500/night rooms!
I’ve been at hotels that have seen similar drop-offs in terms of the level of clientele and the amount of same. In one, the dining room doors were simply locked and a huge potted plant placed in front of them. I’d assume the kitchen was also locked. The overall ambience and mood was “they’re going to tear the place down and build a grocery store soon”
Another hotel (near Sacramento) went a step stranger and walled off most of the dining room, leaving just an area to place some vending machines. Like cheap pants, they had no ballroom*, but the meeting rooms were turned over to staging a guest room remodel project - the rooms were stacked to the ceiling with new mattresses, nightstands, etc. Evidently, they were optimistic that business would “pick up” and eventually be able to re-open that dining room.
If the room is big enough to dance in, but is carpeted and has 10’ ceilings, I call it a meeting room. If the floor is wood, ceilings are high and there’s one or more gaudy chandeliers, it’s a ballroom.
It’s sad to think of a place that once had chambermaids, bellhops, and banquets declining so far. I think it’s probably worse in L.A. than most other cities, my reasoning being thus: in a place like New York City, a hotel might decline, but there’s still a heck of a lot of pedestrian traffic on the street, so there remains some incentive to continue maintaining a deli or other inexpensive type of restaurant, or maybe a bar. The owners are more apt to maintain the place because they still see a point in keeping the premises non-scuzzy enough to attract customers.
But in L.A. we have a few places that once hosted presidents and ambassadors, that have now become total dumps.
Hotels don’t only decline because of bad location and reduced patronage. The Hotel Utah , smack in the middle of downtoen Salt Lake City was in gorgeous shape and in the best location (across from the LDS temple in Temple Square). I thjink it simply got too expensive to run. It was a beautiful place, with an awesome lobby that had a piano playing in it. In 1986 the LDS Church (which owns it) turned it into offices. There was a great deal of outcry about it, and people tried to come up with ways to keep it open, but apparently nothing could make it profitable enough.
A couple of months later Calvin Grondahl (I thjink – it may have been Pat Bagley) published an editorial cartoon that showed a Churcgh worker going into one of the offices and saying “Hey! I think I had my honeymoon here!”
I don’t know what happened to any services, but any restaurants probably stayed open – all those office workers have to be fed.
You still can’t call the Roosevelt a dump. Besides the fact that it functions unofficially as a sort of Oscar shrine for tourists, it’s got all the amenities you’d expect; and the restaurant and bar are popular and at least look prosperous. The pool and jacuzzi area is beautiful, too.
As for the Ambassador, its neighborhood may have declined, but as far as I know the hotel kept up its standards until they decided to close. I don’t think it slid into decrepitude over decades, like the Rosslyn or, for another famous one, the Morrison.
