Culver City’s “first skyscraper” reveals a perplexing history of
alleged owners including Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne. (photo courtesy of The Culver Hotel)

If you know where to look, it’s easy to find remnants of Old Hollywood in Los Angeles. Holdovers from Tinseltown’s Golden Age like the Musso and Frank Grill and the Hollywood Roosevelt draw visitors seeking to revel in technicolor nostalgia. But nestled in Downtown Culver City sits a lesser-known landmark, steeped in L.A. lore with enough twists and turns to rival Hollywood’s greatest screenplays.

The Culver Hotel – now a charming 46-room boutique hotel with a lively restaurant and bar – is a testament to Culver City’s tumultuous history and its inextricable ties to the motion picture industry.

“I love it when people discover the hotel,” said owner and creative director Maya Mallick, who purchased and transformed the hotel in 2007 after it had been neglected for decades. “It’s been there for so many years, and people in Los Angeles, some of them still have never been there, so there’s still so many people that are discovering it.”

The hotel opened as the Hotel Hunt in 1924 – a triangular, Beaux-Arts-style building that was hailed as Culver City’s “first skyscraper” despite being just six stories tall. The hotel was designed by Alexander Curlett and Claud Beelman, known for several other Beaux-Arts and Art Deco buildings in Los Angeles, including the Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel.

But the driving force behind the property was a gumptious real estate developer named Harry Culver – whose namesake city was officially incorporated just seven years prior.

“He was a very visionary person, a real estate person, supposedly a great salesperson as well. He had this dream to create his own city,” Mallick said.

With friends in high places in the burgeoning film industry, Culver established his small town as a place where filmmakers could live and work, advertising it with the slogan “all roads lead to Culver City.” In 1915, he convinced Western film pioneer Thomas Ince to move his studios to Culver City, establishing two separate lots that would later become home to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Sony Pictures.

Just blocks away from the studios, the hotel’s top four floors attracted film executives and Hollywood’s first superstars, while the bottom two floors acted as Culver’s offices for his small but mighty empire.

“It was more of an apartment building at the beginning. I understand it had over 100 apartments that were much smaller,” Mallick said, explaining that producers, directors, writers and actors would stay at the hotel for an extended period of time when on set.

The 1924 National Historic Landmark boasts artful design and a European ambiance.
(photo courtesy of The Culver Hotel)

Famous guests included Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and all 124 Munchkins from “The Wizard of Oz” (who allegedly slept three to a bed and threw wild parties). But the icon most closely associated to the hotel was silent film legend Charlie Chaplin.

The exact details are murky, but Chaplin was rumored to be involved with the construction of the hotel, and may have even been a proprietor before it allegedly changed hands to yet another star of the silver screen in a bizarre turn of events.

“Charlie Chaplin may have co-owned it with Harry Culver, and supposedly lost it in a poker game to John Wayne,” Mallick said.

Purportedly changing hands between the king of Culver City, “The Tramp” and “The Duke,” the hotel experienced a rambunctious youth. During Prohibition, Culver City served as L.A.’s watering hole. Several raucous jazz clubs and speakeasies dotted Washington Boulevard, with names like King’s Tropical Inn, Sebastian’s Cotton Club and Fatty Arbuckle’s Plantation Café. One can only imagine the kind of Gatsbyesque tomfoolery that transpired within the hotel after a long night of bar hopping.

By the 1950s, Harry Culver died and with him went much of the hotel’s early elegance. According to PBS, John Wayne donated the hotel to the YMCA in 1967. In the next few decades, it became a seedy apartment building, gradually falling into disrepair and shutting its doors in the 1980s.

But in the ‘90s, Culver City began to revitalize downtown, and the hotel was spared from being demolished with a renovation and the designation of National Historic Landmark Status. In 2007, Mallick acquired the hotel and began a more extensive restoration inspired by the property’s rich history.

“It’s been an ongoing process over the years,” Mallick said. “In the last three years, we’ve been working on another refresh. It’s very much like a home. It never stops getting updated. We’re always evolving. As a historic building, we need to keep evolving – maintaining the old, bringing in the new, always keeping that nice balance going.”

Today, the hotel’s grand lobby doubles as a swanky bar, cocktail lounge and restaurant. A towering library ladder bookshelf is flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto Culver Boulevard. Across the room, a warm fireplace accents the view of Culver City’s pedestrian-only stretch of downtown. The eclectic décor includes walnut-trimmed pillars, lavish oil paintings and one golden picture frame deliberately left empty and tilted counterclockwise – an otherworldly portal to the hotel’s puzzling past. Do the spirits of the silver screen still haunt the halls of the Culver Hotel? The presence of Clark Gable and Joan Crawford is certainly felt – their posters greet guests upon arrival.

“With a place that’s that old and that’s lived through so many things, there’s definitely a big soul and a big energy,” Mallick said. “I have heard different stories over time, but I think it’s however far your imagination wants to go … I always personally feel Harry Culver is watching over us with a smile.”

If there’s anywhere in the hotel where Harry Culver’s ghost would be spotted, it’s likely his second-floor personal office, which Mallick also restored. With an original paper-white coffered ceiling intact, a black-and-white checkerboard floor and French windows peering over Culver’s meticulously-planned town, the space feels almost presidential.

Down the hall, there’s a secret “Velvet Lounge” above the grand lobby that pays homage to the prohibition era. The dimly-lit speakeasy is an intimate and alluring space with charmingly anachronistic features like a disco ball that capture the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age in a fittingly expressionistic way. It’s open on Fridays and Saturdays from 7 p.m.-midnight, and – like most areas in the hotel – it’s also available for private events.

Mallick said the Culver Hotel embraces a “timeless, not trendy” philosophy, which is evident in nearly every carefully-curated detail. The restaurant and bar menu is a shining example.

The frozen “Ruby Red Slipper Punch”   nods to Judy Garland with rum, strawberry-yuzu sherbet and sparkling Gambino. Of course, with an Old Hollywood flair, martinis abound – three distinct riffs to be precise. “The Culver Martini” takes the iconic drink in a vermouth-forward direction, creating a velvety sipper that’s “wet” instead of “dry.”

Executive chef Diana Khngikyan’s classic American fare embraces a fresh California twist. The cocktail prawns rest on ice alongside their crispy heads – a delicacy for seafood lovers. Wilted garlic cress and au poivre sauce accompany the steak frites, an exceedingly tender wagyu bavette. But the highlight might just be hidden within the dessert menu. The aptly-named “Culver Mess” – an oversized cocktail glass pillowed with whipped meringue, hazelnuts, chocolate ganache and raspberries – twists berries and cream into something that tastes like a cloud from Wonka’s Factory.

Ice cold prawn cocktail pairs jumbo shrimp with a crisp martini. The shrimp heads serve as an extra delicacy. (photo courtesy of The Culver Hotel)

Did I mention that the restaurant moonlights as a jazz club, piano bar and vinyl record lounge? On a hot summer evening, the cool breeze of Sylvia and the Rhythm Boys enchanted patrons with a traditional five-piece jazz revue. There’s live music Tuesday-Saturday from 7-10 p.m., and Sundays from 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

The hotel hosts a variety of events throughout the year – including summer garden parties on the patio and afternoon tea every Saturday. This year, the hotel partnered with the Culver Theater across the street to present “The Golden Screen: A Cinema Series” with iconic films from the MGM library.

“We have the viewing at the Culver Theatre, and then people come and continue the evening at the Culver Hotel,” Mallick said. “We often will do a themed cocktail and bites that tie in with the theme of the movie that we’re showing.”

Now a thriving landmark to the history of Culver City, Mallick pointed out the hotel is always abuzz with activity, filled with people from all walks of life getting together to celebrate in an inviting setting.

“There’s such a wide range of demographic here,” Mallick said. “It’s very comfortable for many different types of people. We’re not kind of stuck in one zone, and I think that contributes to the timelessness. There’s something for everyone to enjoy and discover.”

The Culver Hotel is located at 9400 Culver Blvd. For information, visit culverhotel.com.