Ace Hotel is a chain of hotels headquartered in Portland, Oregon. It operates hotels in Portland, New York, Palm Springs, Panama City, Panama, London, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New Orleans.
History
The first Ace Hotel opened in 1999. Friends Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick purchased and transformed a Seattle halfway house into an affordable hotel that would appeal to the creative class. Calderwood and Weigel had previously founded Rudy's, a barbershop concept they started in Seattle that eventually expanded to more than a dozen West Coast locations, and a marketing and advertising company known as Neverstop.
In 2006, Jack Barron and Michael Bisordi (Tungsten Partners) joined the team as owners, and a second hotel was opened in Portland, followed by properties in Palm Springs and New York in 2009.
In 2011, Ace Hotel collaborated with the cosmetics brand uslu airlines to create a nail polish sold in the hotels' mini-bars.
In 2013, an Ace Hotel opened in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London, as well as a property in Panama by the name of American Trade Hotel.
Calderwood had stated a goal of opening a new Ace Hotel every "one to two years". He died in November 2013, shortly after the opening of the London Shoreditch hotel.
Soon after, the downtown Los Angeles location opened in a former theatre, followed by Pittsburgh in late 2015 and New Orleans in spring 2016.
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.â€
- Ace Hotel Seattle is a former Salvation Army halfway house located in the Belltown neighborhood.
- Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs, CA is a converted Howard Johnson motel, formerly a Westward Ho. King's Highway, the hotel's on-site diner, is a converted Denny's. 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 Portland occupies the former Clyde Hotel in downtown Portland. In its former incarnation, the hotel's lobby served as the setting for a scene from the film Drugstore Cowboy. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- Ace Hotel New York worked with Roman and Williams to redesign the former Hotel Breslin, a 1904 building in Midtown Manhattan. This location features a Stumptown Coffee and Chef April Bloomfield's Michelin-starred The Breslin restaurant.
- Ace Hotel London Shoreditch is in London's Shoreditch arts district, on the site of the original Shoreditch Empire music hall.
- American Trade Hotel is a restored five-story stucco building in the Casco Viejo historical district of Panama City.
- Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles opened in the historic United Artists Building, with 180 rooms and a restored United Artists Theater performance venue, in January 2014.
- Ace Hotel Pittsburgh opened in a historic YMCA building in the city's East Liberty neighborhood in December 2015.
- Ace Hotel New Orleans opened in a 1928 Art Deco building in New Orleans' Warehouse District in March 2016.
In popular culture
The 2011 episode "Blunderbuss" of the sketch comedy series Portlandia had a sketch set at the "Deuce Hotel", where the obnoxiously hip staff hand out complimentary turntables and typewriters to all guests; it was a parody specifically of the Portland Ace Hotel.
References
External links
- Ace Hotel website
- Creative team website
- Ace Hotel blog
