The Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel , commonly known as the Beverly Wilshire Hotel , is a historic luxury hotel in Beverly Hills, California . Located at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive , it was completed in 1928. It has been used as a shooting location for films and television series.
18-560: The hotel was constructed by real estate developer Walter G. McCarty on the site of the former Beverly Hills Speedway . It was completed in 1928 (when the city had fewer than 18,000 residents), and was then known as the "Beverly Wilshire Apartment Hotel". The E-shaped structure is built of a Tuscan stone and Carrara marble in the Italian Renaissance architecture style. Renamed the Beverly Wilshire Hotel by new owners, it
36-456: A British former bicycle racer who was given the work on the strength of his experience building velodromes . Prince had subsequently built a number of oval tracks, many of which suffered from badly designed transitions between the straightaways and curves. The Association's civil engineer, Art Pillsbury, turned to Prince for consultation, found that he was a capable builder but was "quite innocent of any engineering knowledge," and so resorted to
54-495: A method used by railroads, called the Searle Spiral Easement Curve, to design the track's layout and contours. Prince and Pillsbury had set out to build the fastest race track in the nation, and they may have succeeded. At the inaugural event for the brand new facility, which was also the opening race of the 1920 Championship season , victorious Jimmy Murphy averaged more than 103 miles per hour (166 km/h) in
72-531: A nucleus of racer Cliff Durant (son of General Motors' William C. Durant ) and William Danziger of the Rodeo Land and Water Company, and included future three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer . The group purchased land from a bean farmer at $ 1,000 per acre (0.40 ha) in 1919 and began work once the farmer had harvested his crop. The circular Motordrome in Playa del Rey had been built by contractor Jack Prince,
90-421: A single contest in 1924. The final race was held February 24, 1924, before a crowd of 85,000. On that day Harlan Fengler broke the world record for a 250-mile (400 km) race, averaging 116.6 miles per hour (187.6 km/h). After just four years, the 70,000-seat stadium was disassembled to make room for other improvements, as the land was deemed more valuable than the track that lay atop it. The property
108-530: The Los Angeles Speedway ) was a 1.25-mile (2.01 km) wooden board track for automobile racing in Beverly Hills, California . It was built in 1919 on 275 acres (1.11 km ) of land that includes the site of today's Beverly Wilshire Hotel , just outside the "Golden Triangle" . The former site is bounded by Wilshire Boulevard, South Beverly Drive, Olympic Boulevard and Lasky Drive. The project
126-512: The 250-mile (400 km) contest, a pace that was not seen in time trials at the much larger Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 1923. The race was attended by 50,000 fans. In addition to racing, the Speedway hosted other events such as horse shows, and was used as a movie location. The Speedway hosted the opening and closing rounds of the Championship for its first three years, and only hosted
144-493: The Beverly Wilshire was the primary setting for the movie Pretty Woman , though most interior scenes were actually shot at the defunct Ambassador Hotel nearby. It also became a common filming location for HBO's Entourage television series, with cast and crew filming there at least three times per season when it was produced from 2004 until 2011. Beverly Hills Speedway The Beverly Hills Speedway (also called
162-440: The Beverly Wilshire with Ginevra King , whom he'd known when they were both young and who is held to have been a model for Daisy Buchanan, in his The Great Gatsby . During a tour in 1940, the Beverly Wilshire was the only major Los Angeles hotel willing to accommodate Paul Robeson due to his race, at an exorbitant rate and providing he registered under an assumed name, and he therefore spent two hours every afternoon sitting in
180-445: The Beverly Wilshire. Elvis Presley and later Warren Beatty spent a number of years in the hotel. It was also the home of John Lennon , when he was separated for several months from his wife Yoko Ono . The American socialite and Woolworth department store heiress Barbara Hutton spent her last years in near poverty and poor health in the hotel and died there in May 1979. In 1990,
198-579: The United States prior to World War I , and such a track had already been successful in Southern California. The Los Angeles Motordrome in nearby Playa del Rey was the first-ever wooden track purpose-built for motorized competition. The Motordrome created a sensation when it was built in 1910, attracting large crowds of paying spectators for two years before it was destroyed by a fire. The Speedway Association consisted of eleven members around
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#1732859354595216-492: The hotel became The Regent Beverly Wilshire, a Four Seasons Hotel . The hotel was sold to Hong Kong-based private equity firm Joint Treasure International in 1995. In 1996, a consortium led by Lai Sun acquired the property. In 2006, the hotel was again renamed following a renovation, dropping the Regent affiliation and becoming Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel . On Saturday, October 9, 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald lunched at
234-467: The lobby, where he was widely recognised, "to ensure that the next time Black[s] come through, they'll have a place to stay." Los Angeles hotels lifted their restrictions on black guests soon afterwards. On November 18, 1966, Sandy Koufax , star pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers , announced his sudden retirement from baseball at the age of 30 due to his ailing arm in a press conference at
252-476: Was also the site of a racing accident that killed National Champion (posthumous) and Indianapolis 500 winner Gaston Chevrolet in 1920. Because of rapidly increasing real estate values, the Speedway became an uneconomical use of property. The track was torn down and the Association moved its racing operation a few miles away to Culver City, California in 1924. Wooden board tracks were already established in
270-422: Was branded as Hernando Courtright's Beverly Wilshire Hotel . Courtright added a new tower wing in 1971, doubling the size of the hotel. Hong Kong-based Regent International Hotels bought the 395-room luxury hotel in 1985 for $ 125 million, and renovated it at a further cost of $ 100 million, renaming it The Regent Beverly Wilshire . In 1992, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts bought Regent International Hotels, and
288-496: Was financed by a group of racers and businessmen that called itself the Beverly Hills Speedway Association. The track was the first in the United States to be designed with banked turns incorporating an engineering solution known as a spiral easement . The Speedway operated for four years and attracted many historically significant competitors including Ralph DePalma , Jimmy Murphy , and Tommy Milton . It
306-416: Was renovated with a ballroom in the 1940s by architect Paul Revere Williams to accommodate the popular big bands of the day. An Olympic-sized swimming pool was built and championship tennis courts were added, with tennis champion Pancho Gonzalez as tennis director. The hotel changed hands in 1958 and again in 1961, when it was purchased by a group of investors headed by Hernando Courtright . The hotel
324-608: Was sold to a developer for $ 10,000 per acre. The track closed in 1924. By 1928, the Beverly Wilshire hotel was built on the site of the track's north-west turn. The Speedway Association later opened a new track in Culver City , just south of MGM studios. Statistics for winners of each race. Rodeo Drive Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include
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