Ace Hotel is a chain of hotels headquartered in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Founded in 1999 in Seattle, it operates

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

s Internationally in 4 continents, with locations in; Brooklyn,

;

Palm Springs, California Palm Springs (Cahuilla language, Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Rivers ...

;

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, Washington;

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

, Japan; Toronto, Canada; and Sydney, Australia with hotels soon to open in Athens, Greece and Fukuoka, Japan.

History

In 1999, the first Ace Hotel was opened. Friends Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick purchased and transformed a

halfway house A halfway house is a type of prison or institute intended to teach (or reteach) the necessary skills for people to re-integrate into society and better support and care for themselves. Halfway houses are typically either state sponsored for those ...

into an affordable hotel that would appeal to the

creative class The creative class is the posit of American urban studies theorist Richard Florida for an ostensible socioeconomic class. Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of ...

. Calderwood and Weigel had previously founded Rudy's, a reinvigorated traditional barbershop concept they started in Seattle, which eventually expanded to more than a dozen locations, along with an experiential marketing company known as Neverstop, and an audiovisual arts platform known as ARO.Space with

Pearl Jam Pearl Jam is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. One of the key bands in the grunge, grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam has outsold and outlasted many of its contemporaries from the early 1990s, ...

co-founder Stone Gossard and

Kung Faux ''Kung Faux'' is an international action comedy television series and audiovisual art assemblage created by Mic Neumann, an American creator–developer showrunner, conceptual artist and multimedia entrepreneur, who remixes classic kung fu fil ...

creator Mic Neumann, who is credited for bringing in such artists as

Kaws Brian Donnelly (born November 4, 1974), known professionally as Kaws (stylized as KAWS), is an American artist and designer. His work includes repeated use of a cast of figurative characters and motifs, some dating back to the beginning of his ...

and

Shepard Fairey Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989, he designed the " Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campa ...

to decorate the walls of various Rudy's and Ace Hotel locations. In 2006, the group opened a second hotel in Portland, Oregon followed by properties in Palm Springs, California and New York City in 2009. In 2013, an Ace Hotel opened in the Shoreditch neighborhood of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, where Calderwood had defined a goal of opening a new Ace Hotel every "one to two years", before his untimely death at age 47 on November 16, 2013. In 2014, a downtown Los Angeles location of the Ace Hotel opened in a former theatre, followed by Ace Hotel locations in Pittsburgh in 2015, New Orleans in 2016, and Chicago in 2017. In 2020, an Ace Hotel location opened in

Kyoto, Japan Kyoto ( or ; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth-most pop ...

that was designed by

Kengo Kuma is a Japanese architect and emeritus professor in the Department of Architecture (Graduate School of Engineering) at the University of Tokyo. Frequently compared to contemporaries Shigeru Ban and Kazuyo Sejima, Kuma is also noted for his prolif ...

. In September 2020, it was announced that Ace Hotel London Shoreditch would not reopen after being closed because of the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

pandemic. In 2021, Ace Hotel opened locations in Brooklyn, New York; Toronto, Canada and Sydney, Australia. In 2024 Ace is poised to open a hotel on the Athens Riviera in Greece.

Locations

According to Calderwood, the style and furnishing of each Ace property is designed to reflect its location, with an eye towards re-imagining properties that are "challenged." *Ace Hotel Athens *Ace Hotel Brooklyn *Ace Hotel Kyoto opened on June 11, 2020, in a building originally designed by

Tetsuro Yoshida was a Japanese architect. He graduated from Tokyo University and entered the Ministry of Communications in 1919. He designed many Japanese post offices, telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender us ...

for the Kyoto Central Telephone Company in 1926. The

registered Registered may refer to: * Registered mail, letters, packets or other postal documents considered valuable and in need of a chain of custody * Registered trademark symbol, symbol ® that provides notice that the preceding is a trademark or service ...

Taishō era The was a period in the history of Japan dating from 30 July 1912 to 25 December 1926, coinciding with the reign of Emperor Taishō. The new emperor was a sickly man, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group ...

property was redesigned by

. *Ace Hotel New York worked with

Roman and Williams Roman and Williams is a design studio in New York City. It was founded in 2002 by Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch. History Ben Stiller hired the couple to design his Los Angeles home after working with them on the set of the film '' Duplex'' ...

to redesign the former Hotel Breslin, a 1904 building in

Midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan, serving as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the ...

. This location features a Stumptown Coffee and Chef

April Bloomfield April Bloomfield (born 1974) is a British-American chef who has opened two New York restaurants: The Spotted Pig (closed January 26, 2020) and The Breslin Bar & Dining Room. Bloomfield had previously worked at several restaurants in the United K ...

's Michelin-starred The Breslin restaurant. *Ace Hotel & Swim Club in

Palm Springs, CA Palm Springs (Cahuilla: ''Séc-he'') is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately , making it the largest city in Riverside County by land ...

is a converted Howard Johnson motel, formerly a Westward Ho. King's Highway, the hotel's on-site diner, is a converted

Denny's Denny's (also known as Denny's Diner on some locations' signage) is an American table service diner-style restaurant chain. It operates over 1,400 Restaurant, restaurants in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and several other internationa ...

. There are two bars, the Amigo Room, and poolside, the Short Bus. The remodel was a collaboration with L.A.-based design firm, Commune. *Ace Hotel Seattle is a former

Salvation Army The Salvation Army (TSA) is a Protestantism, Protestant Christian church and an international charitable organisation headquartered in London, England. It is aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. The organisation reports a worldwide m ...

halfway house located in the Belltown neighborhood. *Ace Hotel Sydney *Ace Hotel Toronto opened July 2022. The first Canadian site for the Ace Hotel, the property is notable as their first original build. Former locations: *The American Trade Hotel is a restored five-story stucco building in the

Casco Viejo or in Spanish or or in Basque are different names for the medieval neighbourhood of Bilbao, part of the Ibaiondo district. The walled section of the town existed until the end of the 19th century and was known by the names Seven Streets or ...

historical district of Panama City. It was associated with Ace Hotels for a number of years after its opening. *Ace Hotel Chicago Closed in 2021. *Ace Hotel London was in London's

Shoreditch Shoreditch is an area in London, England and is located in the London Borough of Hackney alongside neighbouring parts of Tower Hamlets, which are also perceived as part of the area due to historic ecclesiastical links. Shoreditch lies just north ...

arts district, on the site of the original Shoreditch Empire music hall. The groups first location outside of the US, Ace Hotel London Shoreditch closed in September 2020. * Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles opened in January 2014 in the historic United Artists Building, with 180 rooms and a restored United Artists Theater performance venue. Closed in 2024. *Ace Hotel New Orleans opened in March 2016 in a 1928

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

building in New Orleans' Warehouse District. Closed in 2024. *Ace Hotel Pittsburgh opened in an historic

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...

building in the city's East Liberty neighborhood in December 2015, and closed in 2021. *Ace Hotel Portland opened in 2006 at the former

Clyde Hotel The Clyde Hotel is a historic hotel located in the downtown area of Portland, Oregon, United States that first opened in 1912. It was renamed the ''Ben Stark Hotel'' in 1987, then became the ''Ace Hotel'' when it joined the Ace Hotel group in ...

in downtown Portland. In its former incarnation, the hotel's lobby served as the setting for a scene from the film

Drugstore Cowboy ''Drugstore Cowboy'' is a 1989 American crime drama film directed by the American filmmaker Gus Van Sant. Written by Van Sant and Daniel Yost and based on an autobiographical novel by James Fogle, the film stars Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, Hea ...

. The property is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. The hotel left Ace, however, in 2024 to join the Kasa hotel group and became The

by Kasa.

In popular culture

The 2011 episode "Blunderbuss" of the sketch comedy series ''

Portlandia ''Portlandia'' is an American sketch comedy television series starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, set in and around Portland, Oregon, and spoofing the city's reputation as a haven for eccentric hipsters. The show was produced by Broa ...

'' had a sketch set at the "Deuce Hotel", where the obnoxiously hip staff hand out complimentary

turntables A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...

and

typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...

s to all guests; it was a parody specifically of Ace Hotel Portland. On her song

Ace An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or a club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the ...

, rapper Noname talks about being at Ace Hotel in London.

Bon Iver Bon Iver ( ) is an American indie folk band founded in 2006 by singer-songwriter Justin Vernon in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Vernon had originally formed Bon Iver as a solo project, but it eventually became a band consisting of Vernon (vocals, guit ...

makes a reference to the

Ace Hotel Los Angeles The United Artists Theatre is a historic former movie palace and office building located at 937 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, California. It was the tallest building in the city for one year after its completion in 1927 and was the tal ...

in the song "33 "GOD"" on the album

22, A Million ''22, A Million'' is the third studio album by American indie folk band Bon Iver, released on September 30, 2016. Recorded in lead member Justin Vernon's April Base studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the album marks a major shift in the band's soun ...

References

External links

*
Creative team website

Ace Hotel blog
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