Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles)

The Cecil was built in 1924 by three hoteliers William Banks Hanner, Charles L. Dix and Robert H. Schops[5] as a destination for business travelers and tourists.[6] Designed by Loy Lester Smith in the Beaux Arts style, and constructed by W. W. Paden[7] the hotel cost $1.5 million to complete and boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. The three hoteliers confidently invested about $2.5 million[8] in the enterprise, with the knowledge that several similar hotels had been established elsewhere downtown, but within five years of its opening, the United States sank into the Great Depression. Although the hotel flourished as a fashionable destination throughout the 1940s, the decades beyond saw the hotel decline, as the nearby area known as Skid Row became increasingly populated with transients.[2] As many as 10,000 homeless people lived within a four-mile radius. By the 1950s, the hotel had gained a reputation as a residence for transients.[9]

In 2007, a portion of the hotel was refurbished after new owners took over.[9]

In 2011, the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as "Stay on Main", complete with a new website; its old website, thececilhotel.com, expired at the end of 2013.[10]

In 2014, the hotel was sold to New York City hotelier Richard Born for $30 million,[11] after which another New York-based firm, Simon Baron Development, acquired a 99-year ground lease on the property.[3] In 2016 Matt Baron, president of Simon Baron, said he was committed to the preservation of architecturally or historically significant components of the building, such as the hotel's grand lobby, but his company planned to completely redevelop the interior and fix the "hodgepodge" work that had been done in more recent years.[12] Beyond renovating rooms, the developer also plans a gym, lounge, and rooftop pool. Project completion is slated for sometime in 2021.[13][2]

In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deem the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument, because it is representative of an early 20th century American hotel and because of the historic significance of its architect's body of work.[14]

As the area where the Cecil Hotel is located began to decline, suicides and other violent deaths on the premises became more frequent. The first documented suicide at the Cecil was reported in 1931, when a guest named W.K. Norton died in his room after taking poison capsules.[15] Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, more suicides at the Cecil occurred. By the 1960s, longtime residents had begun to call the Cecil "The Suicide."[15] RoomSpook, a website that tracks hotel deaths, lists at least 12 suicides that happened at the hotel. [16]

In addition to suicides, the Cecil's history includes other kinds of violence and disturbing happenings. It also became a notorious rendezvous spot for adulterous couples, drug activity, and a common ground for sex workers.[15]

In 1947, Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the media as the Black Dahlia, was rumored to have been spotted drinking at the Cecil's bar in the days before her notorious, and to date unsolved, murder.[15]

In 1964, a retired telephone operator named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood, who had been a well-known and well-liked long-term resident at the hotel, was found dead in her room. She had been raped, stabbed, and beaten, and her room ransacked. A man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was charged with Osgood's murder but was later cleared.[17] Her death remains unsolved.

Perhaps most infamously, in the 1980s the hotel was the residence of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the "Night Stalker". Ramirez had been a regular presence on the skid row area of Los Angeles, and according to a hotel clerk who claims to have spoken to him, Ramirez is rumored to have stayed at the Cecil for a few weeks.[15] Ramirez may have engaged in part of his killing spree while staying there.[18] Another serial killer, Austrian Jack Unterweger, stayed at the Cecil in 1991, possibly because he sought to copy Ramirez's crimes.[19] While there, he strangled and killed at least three sex workers, for which he was convicted in Austria. He hanged himself shortly after his conviction.[20]

In 2013, the Cecil (by then re-branded as the "Stay on Main" although still maintaining the original Hotel Cecil signs and painted advertisements on its exterior) became the focus of renewed attention when surveillance footage of a young Canadian student, Elisa Lam, behaving erratically in the hotel's elevator, went viral. The video depicts Lam repeatedly pressing the elevator's buttons, walking in and out of the elevator, and possibly attempting to hide from someone. It was recorded shortly before her disappearance; her naked body was subsequently discovered in a water supply cistern on the hotel roof, following complaints from residents of odd-tasting water and low pressure. How she got into the cistern remains a mystery.[21] The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled her death accidental due to drowning, with bipolar disorder being a "significant" factor.[22]

On 27 March 1987, the band U2 performed an impromptu live concert on the rooftop of a one-storey building on the corner of 7th and Main in Downtown Los Angeles, next door to the Cecil Hotel. The performance, with the hotel featured as a backdrop, was filmed and commercially released as a music video for the release of the band's song "Where the Streets Have No Name".[23]

The hotel is also known as the inspiration for Barton Fink.

It was also the inspiration for American Horror Story season 5, "Hotel".[3]

It was the setting for The NoSleep Podcast season 3 episode, "The Cecil Hotel", which adapted a horror fiction short story loosely based on the death of Elisa Lam that took place in the hotel in 2013.[24]

The hotel can be seen in the background of Blink-182's video "The Rock Show". The song is from the group's fourth album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001). They can be seen throwing money down from a single storey rooftop located next door to the Cecil Hotel.

• The paranormal reality television series Ghost Adventures covered the story of the Cecil Hotel in a special episode of "Ghost Adventures: Cecil Hotel".[25]

• List of deaths and violence at the Cecil Hotel
• List of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in Downtown Los Angeles

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles).

• "Cecil Hotel". thececilhotel.com. Archived from the original on December 8, 2013.