When it opened in 1924, the local press nicknamed this beautiful flatiron-shaped building a “skyscraper” – its six stories visible for miles around. Situated at the epicenter of the newly founded Culver City, the Culver Hotel (originally named Hotel Hunt) housed the offices and vault of none other than the city’s founder, Harry Hazel Culver.
A masterpiece of Beaux Arts design, the building’s ornate Renaissance architecture is easily appreciated by visitors in downtown Culver City, which is pedestrian-friendly. At its opening, the 150-room hotel featured a bathroom on each of its four lodging floors. Today, each of the hotel’s 46 rooms comes with a private bathroom.
From its upper floors, guests could enjoy views and the nearby convenience of Thomas Ince, Hal Roach, and later, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (today Sony Studios) studios and sets. Over time, these guests would include Joan Crawford, Dorothy Dandridge, Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Buster Keaton, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and Lana Turner. During the filming of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, the 124 actors playing the Munchkins also stayed here.
Film stars not only stayed here – some owned the hotel, including Charlie Chaplin who (according to legend) sold the deed to John Wayne in a poker game. Red Skelton is also believed to have been an owner. Although it deteriorated in the decades following the 1950s, renovations begun in the 90s have continued to the present.
It was Lou Catlett, a general partner of Historic Hollywood Properties, who rescued the building in the 90s from real estate speculators. By investing substantial sums of money into the hotel, importing antique furniture from England, restructuring to comply with laws, and undergoing a major conversion, Mr. Catlett saved the hotel from demolition, a fate that many other historic buildings in the Los Angeles area succumbed to at the time.
Since then, the building’s exterior has remained virtually unchanged, but it has undergone several changes of ownership, finally landing in the hands of an independent hotelier family in 2007, who fell in love with the building and had the vision of what it could become again. Maintaining the architectural integrity and classic ambiance inherent in the building’s initial conception, the latest renovation has made the Culver Hotel proudly stand as a National Monument.
Today, the 46-room, 4-star hotel is known as the “jewel of downtown Culver City”.
The Culver Hotel has appeared in numerous films and TV shows, including ‘The Wonder Years’, ‘Last Action Hero’, ‘Sledge Hammer!’, ‘Stuart Little 2’, ‘Bones’, ‘Cougar Town’, and ‘Touch’. Today, numerous TV shows, movies, or commercials continue to be shot in and around Culver City, and parts of the hotel’s exterior and interior have doubled as a London street, a Barcelona apartment, or a Parisian café.
