Hotel Bel-Air

Stone Canyon Road climbs out of Bel-Air between high hedges, and the hotel announces itself only by a stone bridge over a lake where swans paddle under sycamores. Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, has never needed a sign. It occupies the canyon floor that Alphonzo Bell used as the headquarters of his real-estate company when he carved the Bel-Air estates out of ranch land in the 1920s.

History

Bell, an oil millionaire, bought the land in 1922 and built an office, stables and a riding ring for the company that sold Bel-Air lots to the film colony. In 1944 Joseph Drown, a Texan hotelier who had run the Town House in Los Angeles, bought the buildings and the canyon, converted the stables and offices into a hotel, dug the lake and planted the gardens. Hotel Bel-Air opened in 1946 with 60 rooms and a policy of discretion that suited its guests. Grace Kelly lived here before her marriage and kept a suite afterwards; Marilyn Monroe was photographed in the gardens repeatedly; Howard Hughes, Lauren Bacall and Elizabeth Taylor were regulars.

Drown ran it until his death in 1982. The hotel was sold, then bought in 1989 by the Sultan of Brunei's Dorchester Collection, which already owned the Beverly Hills Hotel's rival, the Dorchester in London, and later the Beverly Hills Hotel itself. In 2009 the hotel closed for two years of work that added a spa, a new wing of rooms on the hillside and a restaurant with Wolfgang Puck, reopening in October 2011 with 103 rooms and suites. The interiors were redesigned by Alexandra Champalimaud, the public rooms by David Rockwell.

Architecture and design

The buildings are low Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial structures of pink stucco under red tile roofs, with arcades, courtyards and bougainvillea climbing the walls. The former riding ring is a lawn. Paths wind between the room wings through gardens of sycamore, redwood, palm and citrus, with the lake at the entrance and a kitchen garden behind the restaurant. Champalimaud's rooms mix the Californian and the European, with fireplaces, French doors and private terraces, and Rockwell's bar and restaurant open onto a terrace under the canopy.

Rooms and suites

There are 103 rooms and suites, of which 45 are suites, spread through the garden wings and the hillside building added in 2011. Many have fireplaces and private patios; several of the suites have their own gardens and pools. The Grace Kelly Suite and the Herb Garden Suite are the best known.

Dining

The restaurant, Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner on the terrace and in the dining room, with Puck's Californian cooking. The bar, a wood-panelled room with a fireplace and a piano, is a local institution for residents of Bel-Air and Beverly Hills. A café by the pool serves lunch in the warm months.

Wellness

The spa, opened in 2011, has treatment rooms, a fitness studio and a salon in a wing of its own. The outdoor pool is oval, heated and screened by trees, with cabanas along one side.

Weddings and events

The hotel hosts weddings in the Garden Ballroom and on the lawns, and has been a favourite for small Hollywood weddings for decades. Five event spaces take receptions and meetings of up to around 120 guests. Capacities depend on the room and the layout.

Location

Stone Canyon Road leaves Sunset Boulevard west of the UCLA campus and the hotel is a mile up the canyon, in the Bel-Air residential district. Beverly Hills is ten minutes by car to the east, the Getty Center a similar distance to the west. Los Angeles International Airport is about 12 miles south, 30 to 60 minutes depending on traffic. For a luxury hotel in Los Angeles it is unusually quiet; the canyon walls keep the city out.