Figuring that if anybody was going to try to sneak in booze, it’d be there, lawmen strode into the Palm Room in long coats and low-brimmed hats. On the Chase’s first New Year’s Eve, in 1922, Prohibition was in force. showed up, slouched and louche, to offer the drollery of the Rat Pack. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis staged one of their first nightclub appearances at the Chase. The Rolling Stones stayed at the Chase in 1966. Features included a roof garden, “the first on any West End hotel,” as well as a large palm room, two ballrooms, 12 private dining rooms, and Turkish steam baths and “rubbing rooms” (separate, of course) for men and women. Louis in size.” Smart and swank, it had brought a bit of New York to the corner across from Forest (our Central) Park.Īrchitect Preston Bradshaw took the Chase’s arches and courtyard straight out of the Italian Renaissance, and the marble and ornamental plasterwork inside made the hotel palatial. Owner Chase Ullman introduced his coup as the “largest and costliest residential hotel in any city approaching St. The Chase Hotel opened September 29, 1922, nine stories high and built in just nine months. They’re keeping the light fixtures in the Khorassan Room, and they’re not touching the Art Deco in the Starlight Room except to enhance it.
“The good news,” says longtime Park Plaza resident Jim Espy, “is that the renovations are beautiful. Louisans, meanwhile, watch anxiously: Don’t take away this rich history. The idea is to keep everything as smooth as a freshly made bed, with the hotel staying open throughout. The lobby will be renovated this summer-although management prefers the word “reimagined” so no one thinks of noise and chaos. Workers are tuckpointing the Chase’s exterior and replacing any broken terra-cotta. Rooms have been redone in metallic champagne leather, robin’s egg–blue upholstery, and rich dark-brown accents and the straw-yellow hallways repapered in a silvered birch white. She eventually became chief concierge-and now Royal Sonesta intends to make the lobby she’s presided over as elegant as it was in 1922. “You related to Dave Venn? Helluva piano player. And when she applied to be a publicist for the hotel’s new Baggy Pants Revue, her sixth interview was with the entertainment director, an ex–Broadway dancer who stood about 5-4 with a Beatle haircut and a cigarette forever stuck in his mouth. When she married, it was to a pianist who played regularly at the Chase. In junior high, Jeanne and her friends slurped mile-high “sun-duhs” (pronounced the St. “I hope I don’t leave that way,” he deadpanned.Īs a little girl, she’d pored over glamorous photos of her parents-who were not otherwise glamorous-sipping cocktails at the Chase, her mother full-skirted, with a fetching tiny hat and matching gloves.
Today’s tour group steps closer as she tells them about the time Elvis wanted to take the freight elevator for privacy-and the doors opened on a deceased guest being wheeled out on a gurney. They wanted Venn to give history tours, telling the funny, glitzy, and poignant stories of the previous 10 decades. The new owners were beginning to realize that the Chase was not just another hotel. When Royal Sonesta took over operations, in 2017, Venn had figured that, after decades of humoring celebs and presidents and smoothing over scandals and juggling the needs of 100-year-old residents and hip-hop stars and little kids and Tater Tot, the resident bulldog, it just might be time to retire. Then there was the time Jerry Lewis arrived with his two beloved little dogs and they had trouble adjusting to the new terrain, so the Chase swiftly re-created Las Vegas for them, roping off a small section of Maryland Plaza and adding sand and a tiny palm tree.Īnd the time Count Basie bought Ella Fitzgerald a bracelet in the hotel jewelry shop and the clerks were so nonplused, they wrapped the box all fancy and forgot to slide in the bracelet, so the jeweler had to go down to the theater at 11 p.m…. “I hope I don’t leave that way,” he deadpanned. It’s a mouthful of a name that spans a century of reinventions for the stately Italianate hotel. Editor's Note: This article first appeared in SLM's May 2019 issue.Īs animated as a teenager with a crush, concierge Jeanne Venn bubbles over with stories about the Chase Park Plaza Royal Sonesta.
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