“The most romanticized landmarks in Southern California are usually tied either to the U.S.-Mexican War or to old Hollywood. For the latter, illustrious hotels are the most telling vestiges of popular culture – and the well-preserved hotel is regarded as a treasure. From Santa Barbara to San Diego, from Palm Springs to Catalina, there are corridors and courtyards that bring the past to life: A Malibu-tiled lobby where guests can almost smell the cigar smoke wafting from one of Bugsy Seigel’s poker games; a raucous, cabana-lined poolside that looks much as it did when Katharine Hepburn jimped, fully clothed, into the water after a spirited tennis match.

Perhaps the most iconic of historic California hotels is the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara. The beachfront property was established in 1894 as a country club. In 1925 the Bowman Biltmore Corporation purchased the site, and Los Angeles architect Reginald Johnson began drawing plans for a grand Spanish Colonial Revival hotel to be called the Santa Barbara Biltmore. During the Depression and a concurrent foreclosure, the property again changed hands and underwent a major revitalization. A casino and beach club were added as well as a pool, a ballroom, a convention hall and an observation deck.

To capture the richness of the Biltmore’s past and to create an even stronger tie to the Spanish, Mexican and Moorish influences that first informed Reginald Johnson’s work, the hotel commissioned New York architect Peter Marina to design a new pool, spa and fitness center. In addition, the hotel’s more than two hundred rooms are being redone. Most notably, Dallas-based interior designer Paul Duesing was hired to overhaul the twelve cottages, each of which was completely gutted.

“Over the years the cottages had drifted into looking like typical hotel rooms,” explains Duesing. “We thought they should be more like intimate seaside guesthouses that could be part of a Spanish Colonial manor. The designer began by combing through black-and-white photographs of the Biltmore from the late 1920s and 1930s. He sought out vintage Spanish Colonial-style furniture and lighting and had pieces copied. He even had access to the hotel’s stockpile of furnishings that had collected dust for decades while in storage. “We were able to find some sconces that were actually in the photographs,” says Duesing. “We found a lot of neat old things that we brought back and reupholstered or refurbished.”

According to Duesing, it was vital that the transition from very public to very private be as seamless as possible. The designer grounded the corridors with Spanish Colonial-style furniture and moody period lighting, but the real buffer occurs when guests step out of the main building and onto the brick walkways that take them to their cottages.”

For more, buy the January/February 2006 issue of "Western Interiors".
Used with thanks to the magazine "Western Interiors".