Bowman-Biltmore Hotels

Bowman-Biltmore Hotels was a chain created by hotel magnate John McEntee Bowman.

The name evokes the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore Estate, whose buildings and gardens within are privately owned historical landmarks and tourist attractions in Asheville, North Carolina, United States. The name has since been adopted by other unrelated hotels. For a time, the Bowman-Biltmore Hotels Corporation was a publicly traded company.

In the USA

Arizona

• The Arizona Biltmore Hotel was opened on February 23, 1929, by Warren McArthur Jr. and his brother Charles McArthur along with John Bowman. The Arizona Biltmore was co-designed by their brother the Chicago architect Albert Chase McArthur, who asked Frank Lloyd Wright to collaborate.^[1]

California

• The Flintridge Biltmore Hotel — in La Cañada Flintridge, atop the San Rafael Hills. Site of the present day Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy campus, with some of the historic hotel buildings still in use. Designed by architect Myron Hunt in 1926, in the Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture styles, and commissioned by owner Senator Frank Putnam Flint. The business failed as the Great Depression continued, and the hotel was closed and sold in 1931 to the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose to found the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy there.^[2]
• The Los Angeles Biltmore — is located on Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles. When it opened in 1923 it was the largest hotel west of Chicago in the United States. It was designed by the architectural firm of Schultze & Weaver. The Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel was the "Nerve center" of the 1960 Democratic National Convention; the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, the TV networks, and the candidates including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Adlai Stevenson. Room 8315 was used by the John Kennedy campaign.^[3]
• The Santa Barbara Biltmore — located in Santa Barbara, California, on the Pacific Coast. A masterly synthesis of the Spanish Revival, Mediterranean Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival and Moorish Revival styles of architecture and landscape architecture. 'the Biltmore' opened in 1927. (Four Seasons Hotels bought the Santa Barbara Biltmore in 1987. Ty Warner acquired ownership of the hotel through his Ty Warner Hotels & Resorts in 2000, with a historically sensitive major restoration and services updating following.

Connecticut

• The Griswold was a seasonal resort hotel operated by Bowman Biltmore in New London, Connecticut, near Groton.^[4]

Delaware

• Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, was managed by the Bowman-Biltmore Hotel company and named the Du Pont Biltmore for a time.^[5]

Florida

• The Belleview Biltmore in Belleair, Florida, first opened in 1897 as the Belleair Hotel and was acquired by the Biltmore chain in 1920.^[6]
• The Miami Biltmore Hotel, opened in 1926, by Bowman and George Merrick in Coral Gables, Florida, is a National Historic Landmark. It was sold to Henry L. Doherty in 1931. It served as a hospital during World War II and as a VA Hospital and campus of the University of Miami medical school until 1968. It became a hotel again in 1987, managed by Seaway Hotels Corporation.^[7] President Obama stayed at the Biltmore prior to delivering a speech at the University of Miami.

Georgia

• The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel, designed by Schultze & Weaver, opened in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1924 at a cost of $6 million, it was organized by Coca-Cola heir William Candler, Holland Ball Judkins, and Bowman. It is today an office building.^[8]

New York

• The Ansonia, a legendary apartment building, was for a time an apartment hotel run by Bowman Biltmore.
• The Belmont Hotel, across 42nd Street from Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, was the tallest in the world when built in 1908. It was demolished in 1939.^[9]
• The Commodore Hotel, designed by Warren & Wetmore, was on the opposite side of Grand Central from the Belmont Hotel. It was bought by Donald Trump in the 1970s and converted to the Grand Hyatt New York. The lower levels were similarly gutted to their steel skeleton, retaining the original floorplan, while the exterior was covered in a modern reflective glass facade.
• The Murray Hill Hotel, on Park Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets, was demolished in 1947.^[10]
• The New York Biltmore, designed by Warren & Wetmore, was part of Terminal City, a massive complex of hotels and office buildings connected to Grand Central Terminal. For 23 years the New York Biltmore was the home to the Grand Central Art Galleries, founded in 1922 by John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark, and others.^[11] In 1942, the hotel was the location of the Biltmore Conference, which was a meeting of mostly Zionist groups that produced the Biltmore Program, a series of demands regarding Palestine. The hotel was closed in August 1981 by Paul Milstein, gutted to its steel skeleton, and converted to an office building.^[12] retaining only the Biltmore's famous Palm Court clock.
• The Roosevelt Hotel, also connected to Grand Central Terminal, opened as a United Hotel and merged with the Bowman-Biltmore Group in 1929. This hotel was later purchased by Conrad Hilton in 1948. Realty Hotel (owned by New York Central Railroad) operated it until 1980, and today it is operated by Interstate Hotels & Resorts and owned by Pakistan Airlines.
• The Westchester Biltmore Country Club was founded by Bowman, who hired Walter Travis to design two golf courses in Westchester County, New York.

Ohio

• The Dayton Biltmore Hotel, opened in 1929, was converted to a retirement home in 1981; it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Rhode Island

• The Providence Biltmore opened in 1922. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

International

Cuba

• The Sevilla Biltmore in Havana was bought by Bowman and Charles Francis Flynn in 1919. It was featured in Graham Greene's novel Our Man in Havana (1958), where Jim Wormold joined the British secret service.^[13]
• The Havana Biltmore Yacht & Country Club, opened in 1928, was managed by the Bowman Biltmore company.^[14]

Planned Hotels

Michigan

• A Detroit Biltmore was planned for the site of the Hotel Tuller on Detroit's Grand Circus Park. The Tuller was to have been demolished in 1929 and replaced by a towering 35-story, 1500 room hotel with an attached 14-story garage and 18-story office building. The plans were abandoned when the stock market crashed that year.^[15]

Unassociated hotels

Florida

• The Palm Beach Biltmore was not connected to the Bowman Biltmore group. It was built in 1926 as the Alba, renamed The Ambassador in 1929, and sold to Henry L. Doherty in 1933. Doherty, who had bought the Miami Biltmore two years earlier, renamed the hotel the Palm Beach Biltmore. It was later owned by Hilton Hotels, closed in the 1970s, and was converted to condos from 1979-1981.

Nevada

• The Tahoe Biltmore Lodge & Casino, a hotel-casino in Crystal Bay, Nevada, very near the California border among the communities known as North Shore Tahoe.^[16]

Oklahoma

• The Oklahoma Biltmore in Oklahoma City was an unassociated hotel that once stood downtown, at 228 West Grand Avenue. It was built in 1932 during the Great Depression by the city's prominent civic leaders at the time, headed by Charles F. Colcord. Designed by architects Hawk & Parr, the Biltmore had 619 rooms and was 24 stories high, making it the state's second tallest building only to the Ramsey Tower built in 1931, when it was completed. In 1936 alone, the Biltmore was headquarters for 104 conventions and saw 114,171 guests. After a $3 million renovation in the mid-1960s the Biltmore was renamed the Sheraton-Oklahoma Hotel. By 1973, the hotel had left Sheraton, and the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority agreed with the owners that the Biltmore had outlived its useful life. In contrast, architect I.M. Pei had envisioned keeping the hotel, and his sketches and models all showed the tower overlooking the surrounding "Tivoli Gardens". The hotel was one of the largest demolitions in the country at the time it was blown up on October 16, 1977 by a team of demolition specialists to make way for the "Myriad Gardens". Hundreds of low-yield explosives were planted throughout the building so that it would collapse and fall inward into an acceptable area only slightly larger than the hotel's foundation.^[17][18]

References

External links

• Movies filmed at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel from MoviePlaces.tv