Bev Hills Gets First Landmark: 100 Year Old Beverly Hills Hotel

Tomorrow, Beverly Hills officials, along with Dionne Warwick, will commemorate the one hundredth birthday of Sunset Boulevard's Beverly Hills Hotel and honor it as the city's first historic landmark. This is huge for the city, as it only this year adopted a historic preservation ordinance, after dozens of great/important buildings had already met the wrecking ball. In July, the City Council upheld the Cultural Commission's recommendation to grant BHH the first landmark designation, for its design and role in the growth of the city, according to the Beverly Hills Patch. At the event tomorrow, being held at the Hotel's Crystal Ballroom and Garden, officials will open a time capsule from 1993 containing a hotel napkin drawing by Tony Curtis, a Dionne Warwick cassette, a Milton Berle cigar, and a framed original invitation to the hotel's opening party on May 12, 1912 (a new time capsule will be buried, too). The famously-pink BHH was designed by Elmer Grey, while a 1949 addition on the hotel's eastern side was designed by Paul R. Williams. The hotel has also done a little gussying up in advance of the centennial.
· Beverly Hills Finally Trying to Preserve Historic Buildings [Curbed LA]