Deborah Lloyd Forrest
01/01/2005
Luxury travelers are demanding more refinement in their accommodations than ever before. This is particularly apparent in their attitudes toward historic hotels, where they are willing to pay a premium to stay in plush, five-diamond lodgings with historic cache. In return, they expect grandeur embodied in marble, gold leaf and bronze. They expect architectural elements like soaring marble columns, highly figured mahogany paneling, intricately sculpted ceilings and rich, stained-glass skylights. In short, they want a sophisticated sensory experience.
To sate these finer tastes, we, as interior architects and designers, follow a lodestar that might surprise you. We get direction from The AAA Guide, first published in 1916. Its diamond rating system is the industry standard. Fewer than one-third of 1 percent of the almost 50,000 properties in the United States, Canada and Mexico inspected each year achieve the American Automobile Association’s much-vaunted five-diamond status. Its rating system defines a five-diamond hotel, in part, as having “outstanding elegance and appeal with unique style” and “many personalized services and amenities.” Historic hotels have an advantage here because they possess coveted details that are nearly impossible to create architecturally today. History has simply seeped into their bones.
When a historic hotel becomes our client, we research it thoroughly to uncover its soul. Then we seek to restore its original splendor. A good example is the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville, which we helped elevate from three-diamond to five-diamond status. Working with the hotel’s managing director, Prem Devadas, and his team, we evaluated thousands of details relating to the renovation, weighing them against more than 100 criteria that AAA uses. First, we tried to understand its essence. We pored over thousands of photos to see what it looked like when it first opened. This visual archive gave us information on the original light fixtures and architectural designs, and we used it to replicate plaster moldings in the lobby and walnut paneling in the ballroom. We also combed through historical documents to discover the important political, literary and entertainment figures who stayed there, and to trace the major events that took place within the hotel. Gene Autry rode his horse into the lobby of the Hermitage, for example. Minnesota Fats lived there and played pool on the mezzanine. Sometimes we create a museum within a hotel to showcase its history.
Decorous Details
In the case of the Hermitage, we added a rich paint scheme in ochre, coral, green and ivory with touches of gold leaf to enhance the elegance of the original 1912 Beaux Arts plaster decoration and stunning stained-glass ceiling in the lobby. We custom designed alabaster chandeliers to accentuate the detailed ceiling. We added a grandly scaled fireplace to create a warm, inviting focal point and gathering place. We designed handmade custom rugs—a hallmark of luxury hotels—for the lobby and runners for the monumental staircase to balance the original gray Tennessee marble floors.
Perhaps I make it sound easy, but the modern-day challenges of restoring hotels like the Hermitage are immense and expensive. We had to completely replace outdated wiring and mechanical systems, and improve safety and accessibility in public areas such as the lobby or ballroom, which had only been accessible by stairs. We had to place sprinkler heads carefully so as not to damage the delicate mahogany and other fine moldings. The guest rooms in the Hermitage were small—approximately 250 square feet—and ungracious, so we gutted the guest floors to create generous rooms and suites at least 425 square feet in size with elegant polished marble bathrooms with double sinks and framed mirrors.
While we worked on the structure, supervising some 50 restoration specialists, a hotel management team developed the luxurious guest experience. They designed services to distinguish the hotel from its rivals, including a room-service menu for pets and a tub concierge who is on call in the evening to draw a relaxing bubble bath infused with soothing herbs, adorned by candles and enjoyed with champagne. The entire restoration process lasted nine months and cost $17 million. This attention to detail, large and small, earned the hotel its coveted five- diamond status in November 2003.
Deborah Lloyd Forrest is a principal at ForrestPerkins, an interior architecture and design firm.