The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel near Hollywood BowlRead Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com To read this entire feature FREE with photos cut and paste this link: http://www.jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/hotels/calif/roosevelt/roosevelt.html
The first Academy Awards presentation took place at brand-new Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California, in Blossom Room on May 16, 1929.
Today that same hotel, albeit with a recent multi-million dollar restoration, is only historic hotel in Hollywood still serving travelers, and one of only three such properties in Los Angeles area. This year marks Roosevelt's 75th Anniversary.
Amenities that those original Hollywood movie celebrities missed are new nightclub, Feinstein's at Cinegrill, with state-of-the-art sound and lighting, top entertainment and cuisine. We wonder what Janet Gaynor, Emil Jennings, and Clara Bow would have thought of Precor elliptical trainers, Star Trac treadmills, and free weights in multi-gym fitness center?
The Hollywood Roosevelt was dream of local real estate baron, Charles E. Toberman, who wanted to create a hotel befitting rapidly growing film world and its attendant social circles. The name of 26th President of United States, Theodore Roosevelt, was chosen to convey buoyant optimism of Hollywood throng at time. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were on committee that formulated hotel because they, too, wanted a showplace in Hollywood.
Across from Grauman's Chinese Theatre on legendary Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood Roosevelt is now on National Register of Historic Places. One step into lobby lounge area, with its massive European brass chandelier - originally holding candles - and high, ornately carved and painted ceilings and one can see why. The same intricate ceiling work dominates Blossom Room, which also has Mexican tile wainscoting and three original seven-foot double entry doors of carved oak. Public area floors combine saltillo and Mexican pottery tiles, stained oak and thick, deco-patterned carpets. The balcony wall features historic black and white Hollywood photography, and soft piano jazz wafts throughout.
Inside Hollywood Boulevard entrance, with its leaded glass doors, rests a life-size bronze by sculptor Emmanuil Snitkovsky of a seated Charlie Chaplin, who lived to be 100.