From Big Sur to Boston, this enticing volume follows in the footsteps of Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, Tennessee Williams, Al Capone, Clint Eastwood, Esther Williams, and some of America's most famous personalities and hotel guests. Which famous star stayed at the Biltmore in Coral Gables? Where did notorious Beat writer Jack Kerouac seek refuge? Which beloved entertainer still performs in the cafe of The Carlyle in Manhattan? Which folk singer produced an album and a child in the Hotel Chelsea? The myths, the mysteries, and the affairs unravel city by city in this captivating book by travel writer Francisca Matteoli. A comprehensive appendix guides you to a select list of the nation's most unique hotels to make your own story.

On December 20, 1924, the newest hotel in downtown Los Angeles opened its doors. Catering to businessmen, bankers, theatergoers, and travelers, the Cecil started out as a home away from home for the city's high rollers. Then came the Great Depression. Times changed, and the hotel found itself in the middle of Skid Row. Awash in a sea of violent crime, drugs, and homelessness, the Cecil gained a dark reputation which remains to this day. Tales of murder, suicide, and serial killers are just one part of the hotel's checkered past. Some also claim that restless spirits haunt the rooms and hallways. Following the bizarre and tragic death of a young woman, whose body was found floating in a rooftop water tank, the Hotel Cecil once again found itself in the unwelcome limelight of public attention. Join Richard Estep of TV's "Haunted Hospitals" and "Paranormal 911" in an exploration of this iconic LA landmark's past, present, and future.

When George Washington embarked on his presidential tours of 1789-91, the rudimentary inns and taverns of the day suddenly seemed dismally inadequate. But within a decade, Americans had built the first hotels--large and elegant structures that boasted private bedchambers and grand public ballrooms. This book recounts the enthralling history of the hotel in America--a saga in which politicians and prostitutes, tourists and tramps, conventioneers and confidence men, celebrities and salesmen all rub elbows. Hotel explores why the hotel was invented, how its architecture developed, and the many ways it influenced the course of United States history. The volume also presents a beautiful collection of more than 120 illustrations, many in full color, of hotel life in every era. Hotel explores these topics and more: · What it was like to sleep, eat, and socialize at a hotel in the mid-1800s · How hotelkeepers dealt with the illicit activities of adulterers, thieves, and violent guests · The stories behind America’s greatest hotels, including the Waldorf-Astoria, the Plaza, the Willard, the Blackstone, and the Fairmont · Why Confederate spies plotted to burn down thirteen hotels in New York City during the Civil War · How the development of steamboats and locomotives helped create a nationwide network of hotels · How hotels became architectural models for apartment buildings · The pivotal role of hotels in the civil rights movement

Completed in 1931, New York’s Waldorf-Astoria towers over Park Avenue as an international landmark and a masterpiece of Art Deco architecture. A symbol of elegance and luxury, the hotel has hosted countless movie stars, business tycoons, and world leaders over the past ninety years. American Hotel takes us behind the glittering image to reveal the full extent of the Waldorf’s contribution toward shaping twentieth-century life and culture. Historian David Freeland examines the Waldorf from the opening of its first location in 1893 through its rise to a place of influence on the local, national, and international stage. Along the way, he explores how the hotel’s mission to provide hospitality to a diverse range of guests was put to the test by events such as Prohibition, the anticommunist Red Scare, and civil rights struggles. Alongside famous guests like Frank Sinatra, Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, and Eleanor Roosevelt, readers will meet the lesser-known men and women who made the Waldorf a leader in the hotel industry and a key setting for international events. American Hotel chronicles how institutions such as the Waldorf-Astoria played an essential role in New York’s growth as a world capital.

Adventure is a state of mind. An addiction to the unexpected, the unknown, freedom, and risk. It s Steve McQueen driving his speeding bullets during the shooting of Le Mans; Dian Fossey with her gorillas in Rwanda; Lawrence of Arabia fascinated by the Jordanian desert; Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda crossing New Mexico on their Harleys; and Harry Potter at Hogwarts. In this book, Francisca Matteoli follows the paths of these adventurers and brings their legendary films to life, connecting each narrative with an unusual hotel. A unique and personal guidebook, full of anecdotes, information, and souvenirs."

Winner, 2012 Sally Hacker Prize, Society for the History of Technology Hotel Dreams is a deeply researched and entertaining account of how the hotel's material world of machines and marble integrated into and shaped the society it served. Molly W. Berger offers a compelling history of the American hotel and how it captured the public's imagination as it came to represent the complex—and often contentious—relationship among luxury, economic development, and the ideals of a democratic society. Berger profiles the country's most prestigious hotels, including Boston's 1829 Tremont, San Francisco's world-famous Palace, and Chicago's enormous Stevens. The fascinating stories behind their design, construction, and marketing reveal in rich detail how these buildings became cultural symbols that shaped the urban landscape.

What is a hotel? As Caroline Field Levander and Matthew Pratt Guterl show us in this thought-provoking book, even though hotels are everywhere around us, we rarely consider their essential role in our modern existence and how they help frame our sense of who and what we are. They are, in fact, as centrally important as other powerful places like prisons, hospitals, or universities. More than simply structures made of steel, concrete, and glass, hotels are social and political institutions that we invest with overlapping and contradictory meaning. These alluring places uniquely capture the realities of our world, where the lines between public and private, labor and leisure, fortune and failure, desire and despair are regularly blurred. Guiding readers through the story of hotels as places of troublesome possibility, as mazelike physical buildings, as inspirational touchstones for art and literature, and as unsettling, even disturbing, backdrops for the drama of everyday life, Levander and Guterl ensure that we will never think about this seemingly ordinary place in the same way again.