“From the Pico House . . . to the Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles Has Traveled Far”: The Building of the Biltmore Hotel, 1921-1923, Part Three

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Pushing ahead with this third part of a post on the planning and construction of the Biltmore Hotel, a Los Angeles landmark adjacent to Pershing Square, we turn to 1923 with the onset of the year bringing mention of the project by the Los Angeles Times with respect one of the paper’s core interests, the so-called “open shop” or non-union conditions in the Angel City’s business world.

The paper trumpeted the enormous growth occurring at the peak of another of the region’s booms, providing tables of the usual measures of growth—population, property valuation, bank clearings, permit values, etc.—flanking a striking image of a massive sun rising over mountains in the area and a magnet marked “Ideal Industrial Conditions” and its poles denoted as “Labor” and Capital” radiating in the pull of progress.

The paper proudly pointed out that, in the three past years, $250 million of building took place without the hindrance of labor strikes and it promoted the progress of 33 years of the “open shop” and its preeminent position in regional business and industry. Looking just at 1922, it added that “Los Angeles has written commercial and industrial history which has astounded the nation.”

Pointing out that, while the Angel City was the tenth largest city in the country in population, it was third in building with permit totals for the prior year at nearly $121.5 million, behind only New York City and Chicago, the Times asserted that the city “went placidly along with her colossal building program” since 1920, while the Big Apple endured a construction industry scandal “which rocked the nation,” and Chicago, too, was beset with corruption of a similar nature with the paper identifying unions as complicit. It crowed,

In the meantime this city went ahead with such large improvements as the Pacific Mutual Building, the Los Angeles Speedway, the Ambassador Hotel and the Exposition Park Stadium [the Coliseum], without a whimper of labor trouble.

Twenty-five thousand contented artisans continue to work happily together in the City of the Angels, which long ago became famous for its industrial freedom. Several hundred men in the various building trades are working shoulder to shoulder on the $7,000,000 Biltmore Hotel job, a few with union-membership cards in their pockets, but all receiving uniform pay and enjoying freedom from the domination of the walking delegate.

As noted previously in this post, one of the principal investors in the Central Development Corporation, builder of the Biltmore, was the Times‘ publisher, Harry Chandler, who was purportedly more interested in real estate than journalism.

At the end of the month, Bowman returned to town to inspect the project, now pegged at $8.5 million and determined to be almost two-thirds completed. He was expected to sign contracts for final construction phases and furnishings with the intent to open the hotel on 1 October. As he disembarked from his train car, the lessee told the paper, “from what I have learned, no hotel of like size was ever erected in such record time.”

The hotelier continued that, once he completed his inspection, he could better identify the actual opening date, but assured readers “we intend to give the guests of the new Biltmore every luxury and comfort available in an ultramodern hotel.” Bowman was joined by architect Leonard Schultze and greeted at the station by Central Development President Lee A. Phillips (as well as vice-president of the neighboring Pacific Mutual), Schultze’s local rep, David R. Todd, and Biltmore manager Charles Baad.

The article also observed that furniture was being manufactured at the nation’s hub for that industry, Grand Rapids, Michigan, but Bowman announced that heavy furniture for the lobby along with carpet, hangings and other material were to be produced by local concerns. Having spent five weeks visiting other Biltmore and Bowman properties, he was to return to New York City after leaving Los Angeles.

The Times of 11 February provided another detail update of the structure, described as being “of a Renaissance nature—a combination of Italian and French with a touch of Spanish influence.” Public rooms in plaster, marble and stone were to be “richly hung with draperies” as furnishings were expected to comprise around a quarter of the construction price and “designed to afford every comfort and luxury, and the privacy found in private homes.”

Also noted was the work on the adjoining Biltmore Theatre and connected to the hotel by a marble-lined arcade running from Olive Street just a few feet south of Fifth Street and flanked by shops. Bowman was joined by Baad, Phillips and Herbert R. Stone, the Biltmore decorator, in poring through blueprints and discussing the building’s elements. For example, the lobby was to “rank in splendor among the most magnificent in the world” with tapestry-draped travertine walls and “warmed by the flood of bronze-fixtured lights” featuring multi-colored bulbs and silk shades.

Plush rugs were to cover its marble floors and huge marble columns reaching four stories high met decorated plaster cornices and the ceiling. The furniture was to comprise reproductions of ones found in Italy and Spain and scaled to be in harmony with the atmosphere while covered with brocade, velvet and tapestry. A massive chandelier, made of bronze and marble, was to have parchment and silk shades, while the adjoining men’s lounge and grill were also to be richly appointed with a maple dance floor and an elevated area around it with tables and chairs.

Also of note was the description of the two-story gallery running north to south, with multicolored tapestries to be on the walls and more Italian and Spanish-influenced furniture. Located off this section were to be a reception room, ladies’ room, private dining room and the check room, as well as a large music room with travertine walls, a massive stone fireplace and a chestnut-colored oak wainscot.

Discussed further were the main dining room, supper room and “palm room,” this latter to have plant and flower boxes giving it a “conservatory effect,” customized rugs for the theme and upholstered furniture painted in harmony and with chairs and settees having damask seat and back cushions. The main ballroom was to boast a maple floor and drapery-hung walls of marble, plaster and stone, as well as having a gallery around all sides.

Like the dining and palm rooms, the supper room was to be three stories high, and it was to be decorated with similar sumptuousness, with plenty of marble, plaster and stone, along with damask hangings and a deep, lush carpet. The dining room was to be fully carpeted with a “heavy-figured Saxony” design and much color with the cornices and ceiling and rounded windows with curtains reproducing Portuguese tapestry. An interesting feature was that a center section of the carpet could be removed for dancing.

As for rooms, it was reported that

The typical floors are arranged in single and connecting bedrooms and in richly furnished and decorated suites comprising salons, dining rooms and bedrooms, with the opportunity of linking up as many bedrooms as desired. The suites, of which there are twenty-seven in number, may be shut off from the main corridors, making an exclusive corridor to accommodate all rooms in the suite.

All rooms were to have panelled walls with molding and painting and the floors fully covered in Wilton carpeting with runners in the corridors of Saxony carpet with tapestry coloring. Windows were to have shades and casement and heavy curtains. In all, the Biltmore was to have 1,112 rooms, all with en-suite bathrooms.

Furniture was to have tops of plate glass with colored damask mats, while beds sported colored bedspreads and reading lamps that could be adjusted, along with desks. Walls were covered with colored prints, etchings and framed mirrors and ice water was available in each room, while the bathrooms all had glass showers. Radios could be had by request and linked to a giant antennae and a main receiver in the building. All rooms faced to the outside to guarantee adequate light and “fresh air” in the burgeoning city with its ever-increasing parade of automobiles and trucks.

A month later, Bowman was interviewed in Chicago for the Daily National Hotel Reporter of 12 February and remarked on what made the west coast different from its eastern counterpart, including construction, so that the rapidity of the building of the Biltmore “commands my greatest admiration.” Exclaiming that, if it was necessary, the hotel could be open within sixty days, the lessee stated that, unlike in the east, buildings in Los Angeles worked on the lobbies early, as well as the ballrooms.” Bowman concluded that “they are wonderful people ‘on the Coast” and I intend to give them a wonderful hotel.”

The more liberal Los Angeles Record of 20 March ran a feature about a purported proposal by the powerful Pacific Electric Railway to use Pershing Square as a subway terminal, asking citizens for the views on the subject. Along with those protesting the use of city property, or those insisting on proper remuneration for such a purpose, or one man predicting that streetcar systems would soon be obsolete in the face of the relentless rise of the auto, salesperson Henderson W. Tarbett, offered his opinion that,

Special privilege masquerades again under the name of a public service corporation. An inquiry into the ownership of the Biltmore Hotel, fronting on Pershing Square, might disclose the interesting fact that the owners of the hotel and the owners of the Pacific Electric are one in identity. Their next move will be a request for a private subway under Olive street, connecting the lobby of the hotel with the subway station.

While Henry E. Huntington, former PERY head, was an investor in the Biltmore, the “one in identity” comment was a good deal less than insinuated, although the connections of the business elite in the city (and in any metropolis), of course, meant that allied interests often served each other with alacrity. The Subway Terminal Building, by Schultze and Fullerton, architects of the Biltmore, was soon built just a block away at Olive and 4th and the Metro subway system passes through the area today with a Pershing Square stop at Olive and 4th and Hill and 5th.

The Record of the 29th did report that the City Council was poised to cut a path through Pershing Square for the benefit of Biltmore guests, who could exit the hotel and more directly cross the park to Hill Street. The cost was stated to be not quite $4,200 and, after it was stated that some trees would have to be cut down for the project, the paper added that more would be lost if the subway terminal was placed under the park as mentioned above.

Returning to labor issues, the Times of the 30th offered that an effort to get a strike going among carpet layers “to spring the going wage $1 a day” was failing, according to F.J. Zeehandelaar, secretary of the powerful Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association. Fewer workers walked out than anticipated, but “a peculiar angle” was revealed when the organization stated that the only carpet installer to refuse to sign an “open shop” agreement “is hoping to get the Biltmore Hotel carpet job and hire all the carpet layers who are on strike. Zeehandelaar, however, pointed out that the work was not to be contracted for weeks and the carpet was coming from the east, implying the laying would be done by an outside firm.

News regarding the Biltmore proved rather sparse for much of the rest of 1923, though a critique of the hotel adding a chapel, announced in April, that stated “it is a lazy religion that needs chapels in hotels” sparked a brief 1 August editorial by the Times, which offered that “it is in serene conformity with the growing idea of taking religion into the business world.” Whether the hotel was more to be used by business travelers or tourists was another point, but the paper concluded that “the inspiration is itself a worthy and commendable one” so that “the traveler [could] have his place and influence for prayer.”

The 25 May edition of the Times briefly reported on Bowman representative James Woods’ visit to the hotel as he was to lead the completion and opening of it and his echoing the points raised by his boss earlier in the year about the record construction time. At the end of August, manager Baad was profiled in the Record in George F. Helliwell’s “Snapshots” column, likening the Biltmore manager to the mayor of a small city, though the columnist misspelled his subject’s surname as “Badd.” Some of the manager’s biography was included, including his start in the hotel business in Canton, Ohio, followed by tenures in Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco before running the Hotel Alexandria in Los Angeles.

As the completion of the hotel neared, advertisements by fine clothiers encouraged those planning to attend the opening to buy their duds at their establishments. The 27 September edition of the Los Angeles Express remarked on the financial aspect of the hotel project, featuring a photo of Phillips and proclaiming that it was “a monument to the Los Angeles spirit and the virility and enterprise of the public-spirited men who made it possible.”

The fact that it was to open without any debt and with a surplus in the treasury was seized upon, as was the absence of fees paid to brokers or to financial advisers—this not needed because of the presence of several of the city’s most prominent bankers on the board of Central Development. The raising of millions of dollars of capital from all local sources and within just several weeks was also lionized, as the nearly $8 million secured came from $3.5 million in bonds and just north of $4 million in stock as primary.

The lease terms, discussed in a previous part of this post, were also praised as protective of stockholders and their future dividends and the predominance of local contractors was obviously viewed as good for Los Angeles business. The piece concluded by opining that the Biltmore “will stand a monument to the public spirit of a group of citizens who have done so much for Los Angeles,” especially the officers and directors of Central Development.

We will conclude tomorrow with part four, looking at the opening of the Biltmore and the lavish attention paid to it in the local press, so be sure to join us then!