I stayed in London as a guest of The Beaumont.
Good ol’ Jimmy Beaumont. When Prohibition hit the USA, he moved to London and gave Mayfair the swellest, swankiest hotel that it had ever seen.
Or... did he?
When I arrived at The Beaumont last week for a two-night stay, I was impressed from the start. Everything in my room harmonised in a stylish, Art Deco way, which spoke of decades of devotion to a consistent interwar style:
The 20th century elegance extended throughout the hotel, including the marvellous Magritte Bar and Colony Grill Room, the latter lined by large paintings depicting 1920s New York City and other parts of the USA:
It was delightful. Except, of course, that Jimmy Beaumont was a myth. The Beaumont was not pushing a hundred years old either - it opened just five years ago, in 2014, within (get this) a former parking garage serving customers of the nearby Selfridges department store.
The garage which opened in 1926 had, fortuitously, a beautiful facade which could be put to other uses - including the addition of Room, a sculpture which looks like a sleeping robot but is in fact the exterior of an unusual hotel room:
This bit of cheeky fun - inventing a colourful founder and then designing the hotel around his imagined tastes and personality - is an approach I thoroughly approve of. As a writer, the storytelling has great appeal; it makes The Beaumont a stimulating place to stay in, as you glance over its interiors with an eye to its fictitious founder.
And if Jimmy never existed, I doubt any of the people depicted in portraits on its corridor walls existed either. Sorry, random naval officer:
Just the Facts:
The Beaumont
Brown Hart Gardens, Mayfair, London, UK
Phone: +44 20 7499 1001
Web: www.thebeaumont.comRates: Rooms from A$780 per night.
Who knows, some of the portraits could have been genuine, with London, you never know what is going to turn up in the second hand markets.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought. :)
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