The Historic La Valencia Hotel La Jolla California Ocean Side

by Wayne Moran

Title

The Historic La Valencia Hotel La Jolla California Ocean Side

Artist

Wayne Moran

Medium

Photograph - Fine Art Photography

Description

The Historic La Valencia Hotel La Jolla California

One of the founding members of Historic Hotels of America, La Valencia Hotel is among southern California’s most sought-after holiday destinations. This spectacular vacation getaway made it grand debut in the winter of 1926, when La Jollans MacArthur Gorton and Roy B. Wiltsie opened it as an apartment hotel called “Los Apartmentos de Sevilla.” Perched atop a hill overlooking La Jolla Cove, the two men had spent several hundred thousand dollars to construct their magnificent new building. They hired architect Reginald Johnson to create its ornate appearance, who used a brilliant blend of Spanish Colonial Revival-style architecture as the source of their inspiration. Beautiful stucco tiling proliferated throughout its exterior, making the building one of the most iconic landmarks in La Jolla. Hundreds of guests subsequently attended its opening ceremony, which Gorton and Wiltsie threw at the height to the holiday season. And due to Gorton’s connections with Hollywood at the time, many of the age’s most illustrious celebrities attended the event. Word quickly spread across California of the hotel’s unrivaled elegance, encouraging people from all over the state to reserve a guestroom. Soon enough, Los Apartmentos de Sevilla was attracting hundreds of patrons every month. Groton and Wiltsie were even forced to expand the hotel’s facilities in 1928 as a means of addressing its dramatic rise in popularity.

Designed by Herbert J. Mann and Thomas L. Shepherd, the new addition was an eight-story unit that featured guestrooms for shorter overnight stays. It also contained a marvelous restaurant headed by a trained chef, and a lounge with a full-length balcony that faced the Pacific Ocean. A wealth of new architectural elements appeared inside, too, the most notable of which was a tile mural painted by Dutch artist Ernest Batcheler. The image portrayed a Spanish woman who wore a pink, traditional “Sevilla” dress, as well as a shawl and a headpiece called a “mantilla.” In fact, the tile work impressed so many patrons that they took to calling the entire hotel the “Pink Lady of La Jolla. Yet, the single greatest feature the construction produced was a distinctive tower and its gold dome that dominated the hotel’s skyline. To commemorate the relaunch of the business, the two men renamed the building as the “La Valencia Hotel.” They had certainly spare no expense, as the final price on the construction reached a total investment of some $300,000! And thanks to the care demonstrated by Groton and Wiltsie, the reborn La Valencia Hotel managed to endure the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s. They even debuted two brand new fine dining establishments called “The Whaling Bar” and “Café la Rue,” which quickly became the centerpiece of the new hotel.
https://www.historichotels.org/us/hotels-resorts/la-valencia-hotel/history.php

Uploaded

August 6th, 2022

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