# Legendary Lost Hotels



## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

*Thread dedicated to Grand No-Longer-Existing Hotels. Thanx in advance for all your candidates and suggestions!* :cheers:

*Grand Hotel Hungaria*, Budapest / Hungary

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Opened in 1871, hotel stood on the Danube riverbank on the Pest side. It was the first six-storey building in Budapest, luxuriously appointed and equipped with some of the latest technologies at the time. In 1945, during and air rade, the hotel was hit by a bomb and burned completely. Today on its (approximate) place stands the Marriott Budapest (originally known as Duna Inter-Continental Budapest).

*Hotel Ruhl*, Nice / France

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Located on the Nice's celebrated Promenade des Anglais, Hotel Ruhl was constructed on the site of the former Hotel des Anglais and opened its doors in 1913. It was designed by Charles Dalmas, famous Belle-Epoque architect who signed many of Riviera's landmark buildings, including the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. Golden period for the Ruhl Hotel lasted between 1920 -1930, when it hosted many world-known names. The year 1970 brought an end to this grand legendary hotel and it was demolished to make room for the new, still operating Le Meridien, Nice


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## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

*Carlton Hotel*, London / United Kingdom

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Designed by architect Charles J. Phipps, Carlton Hotel was opened in 1899 at the corner of Pall Mall and Haymarket Street. "King of hoteliers and hotelier to kings" - Cesar Ritz, was one of its first managers. During the London blitz of 1940, the building was destroyed, while it was totally demolished during 1957-58. The New Zealand House stands on this site today.

*Riviera Palace Hotel*, Monte-Carlo (Beausoleil) / Monaco

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One of the symbols of Belle-Epoque, the Riviera Palace was built between 1898 and 1903, according to the plans of French architect Georges-Paul Chédanne. It was envisioned by Camille Blan, the first Mayor of Beausoleil. Located 180 meters above sea level, hotel offered magnificent views from its guestrooms, while one of its most famous features was the wast winter garden, covering more than 900 square meters and 27 meters in height. Glass roof enclosing this impressive garden was created by Gustave Eiffel, author of the world-renown Tour d' Eiffel in Paris. At the beginning of 20th century, Riviera Palace was frequented by many of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and English aristocratic members. Today, it is an apartment building, listed as a Historic Monument of France since 1989.


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## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

*Cecil Hotel*, London / United Kingdom

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Opened in 1896, Cecil Hotel was named after Cecil House (also known as Salisbury House), a mansion belonging to the Cecil family that had occupied the same site in the 17th century. It was designed by architects Perry & Reed in a "Wrenaissance" style (referring to Sir Christopher Wren). When it opened, hotel was the largest in Europe with more than 800 rooms (according to some sources, 600) and facilities such as 100 foot long Ballroom capable of accommodating 600 dancers. The proprietor later went bankrupt and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. A section of the hotel was used as the original RAF headquarters in 1918. In Autumn 1930, The Cecil was largely demolished, and Shell Mex House was built on the site. The Strand facade of the hotel remains, with, at its centre, a grandiose arch leading to Shell Mex House proper.


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

What a shame!
Great drawings, great hotels


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## RR1991 (Dec 24, 2005)

*Hotel de Graaff*, Enschede / the Netherlands

Hotel de Graaff was a luxurious hotel for the high-class people that came to Enschede for business. During the hotels' exploitation, Enschede was the biggest textile-producing town in the Netherlands. 



















With the fall of the textile era, so did the hotel.

1.









2. De Graaff, after expansion. (1957)









In 1968 it was demolished


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Am I the only one who finds most of hotels in this list ratter mundane and not worth preserving? I myself have contempt for neoclassical, art-nouveau and eclectic designs of mid-to-late 19th Century: not much originality, just a mash-up of older styles in a context of construction techniques that changed the way people built hotels (and residential buildings for that matter), conveying too much information and overdose of decorative elements on façades. 

I'd rather have baroque or truly classical buildings preserved, and I prefer cities that replaced them with *good* samples of expressionist, modernist, brutalist and - more recently - minimalist design.


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## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> Am I the only one who finds most of hotels in this list ratter mundane and not worth preserving? I myself have contempt for neoclassical, art-nouveau and eclectic designs of mid-to-late 19th Century: not much originality, just a mash-up of older styles in a context of construction techniques that changed the way people built hotels (and residential buildings for that matter), conveying too much information and overdose of decorative elements on façades.
> 
> I'd rather have baroque or truly classical buildings preserved, and I prefer cities that replaced them with *good* samples of expressionist, modernist, brutalist and - more recently - minimalist design.


Architecturally speaking - yes. 95% of the hotels belonging to the 'era' of grand historic hotels are not very valuable if we are considering only their architectural sense (exterior/interiors). But most of those hotels became much more then just a building, or a place where one could get a good meal + sleep. Most of those hotels became an important part of the social life of the city itself and I find this detail even more relevant than the building itself. 
If you have an institution which traces 100/150/200 years back into history, would you demolish it just because its outershell does not have an architectural value? I would preserve it. For me, the content is important.


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## Sweet Zombie Jesus (Sep 11, 2008)

St Enoch Station Hotel, Glasgow, opened 1879, demolished 1977 along with the ajoining train station (a stupidly short sighted decision given passenger numbers have since increased to the point where recently it has been recommended a new terminus station be built in the same area to relieve pressure on the cities Central Station, but thats for another thread...)









(image from the wiki article)


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## OtAkAw (Aug 5, 2004)

*Hotel De Oriente, Manila*



















Believed to be the first 5-star hotel built in the Philippines (1850's), this Spanish colonial gem is just yet another victim to World War II.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Suburbanist said:


> Am I the only one who finds most of hotels in this list ratter mundane and not worth preserving? I myself have contempt for neoclassical, art-nouveau and eclectic designs of mid-to-late 19th Century: not much originality, just a mash-up of older styles in a context of construction techniques that changed the way people built hotels (and residential buildings for that matter), conveying too much information and overdose of decorative elements on façades.
> 
> I'd rather have baroque or truly classical buildings preserved, and I prefer cities that replaced them with *good* samples of expressionist, modernist, brutalist and - more recently - minimalist design.


I guess thats just your general distaste for historicist buildings. You are probably not alone with it. I however think historicism, if done well is one of the most underrated architectural styles. 

But it puzzles me how you could accuse art-nouveau (I guess you also mean Jugendstil) of showing little creativity and simply being a mesh up of older styles which it simply is not. But then I take it that you are a modernist and you are not a fan of anything which goes a lot beyond functionalism.

The wish to have any historicist or by that matter any building replaced by a brutalist building is nothing short of monstrous, like the style.


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## Bricken Ridge (Feb 16, 2008)

There are still plenty of legendary historic hotels that still exists today but they are "lost". Does that count?


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## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

Bricken Ridge said:


> There are still plenty of legendary historic hotels that still exists today but they are "lost". Does that count?


If your "lost" term means that those hotels got some other function - sure! (for example, mentioned Riviera Palace in MC is a residential building today)


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## Bricken Ridge (Feb 16, 2008)

box021 said:


> If your "lost" term means that those hotels got some other function - sure! (for example, mentioned Riviera Palace in MC is a residential building today)



Either that or they are in the same league as motels.


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## dmarney (Jul 26, 2008)

I love the London Hotels at the start, very grand


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## brossa (May 21, 2007)

What a great thread!
Looking forward to more posts!


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## Cecil654 (May 3, 2011)

I've been reading some of the responses to the claims by Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin that the newly-released Census 2010 population figures fail to show a predicted "return to the city" by suburbanites. Ryan Avent points out that given central city supply constraints, what we should be looking at is not only population figures but also housing prices to determine where changes in demand have occurred. Indeed, Austin Contrarian's Chris Bradford identifies core Austin neighborhoods which experienced increases in both price and total housing units over the past decade while simultaneously losing population. Michael Lewyn notes that a city-wide view fails to capture what may be very positive changes in those individual neighborhoods with truly urban form. Stephen Smith writes that given the long time frames involved in urban population shifts, it is far too early to be writing an obituary for the American urban renaissance.


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## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

..


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## 863552 (Jan 27, 2010)

*FEDERAL HOTEL - MELBOURNE*​


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## box021 (Jun 24, 2007)

*FEDERAL HOTEL - MELBOURNE*
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Thanx for these photos Solopop!  
What happened to this hotel?


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## 863552 (Jan 27, 2010)

Demolished in 1972 to make way for an office building. :/


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