The Dorchester is a five-star hotel on Park Lane and Deanery Street in Westminster, Greater London, England, to the east of Hyde Park, one of the world's most prestigious hotels. It opened on 18 April 1931, and still retains its 1930s furnishings and ambiance, despite later alterations.
Throughout its history, the hotel has been associated with the rich and famous. During the 1930s, it became known as a haunt of writers and artists such as poet Cecil Day-Lewis, novelist Somerset Maugham, and the painter Alfred Munnings. It has held prestigious literary gatherings, such as the "Foyles Literary Luncheons", an event the hotel still hosts today. During the Second World War, the strength of its construction gave the hotel the reputation of being one of London's safest buildings, and some politicians and military leaders chose it as their London residence. Princess Elizabeth was at the Dorchester the day before her engagement to Philip Mountbatten was announced on 10 July 1947. The hotel has long been popular with film actors, models, and rock stars; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton often stayed at it during the 1960s and 1970s. It became a Grade II listed building in January 1981 and in 1985 was bought by the Sultan of Brunei. It now belongs to the Dorchester Collection, owned by the Brunei Investment Agency.
In the 1950s, the stage set designer Oliver Messel made changes to the interior of the hotel. Between 1988 and 1990, it was completely renovated at a cost of $100 million by Bob Lush of the Richmond Design Group.
Today, the Dorchester has five restaurants: The Grill, Alain Ducasse, The Spatisserie, The Promenade, and China Tang. Alain Ducasse's restaurant is one of the UK's five 3-Michelin-starred restaurants. Afternoon tea, a tradition at the hotel since it opened in 1931, is served every day of the week at five in the afternoon in The Promenade and the Spatisserie. Harry Craddock, a well-known barman in the 1930s, invented the "Dorchester of London" cocktail here at the Dorchester Bar. A well-lit plane tree stands in the front garden and was named as one of the Great Trees of London by the London Tree Forum and Countryside Commission in 1997.
History
Background The site was originally part of the Manor of Hyde, which was given by William the Conqueror to Geoffrey de Mandeville. Joseph Damer acquired it in the 18th century, and a large house was constructed in 1751. It was named Dorchester House in 1792, after Damer became the Earl of Dorchester. In the early 19th century it became known as Hertford House after it was purchased by Francis Seymour-Conway, the 3rd Marquess of Hertford, and alterations were made to it. Following the death of Hertford, it was rebuilt as a new Dorchester House for the use of Captain Robert Stayner Holford.
The background to the development of the Dorchester Hotel is complicated.
Sir George Holford died in 1926. His heir was his nephew Edmund Parker, 4th Earl of Morley, who had inherited large debts from his father and grandfather. He immediately put his Holford inheritance of both Dorchester House and Westonbirt House up for sale.Johnson, Ceri, Saltram House, Devon, guidebook (2005), pp. 54–57
Sir Francis Towle, managing director of Gordon Hotels, saw Dorchester House as an ideal site for a luxury hotel, but his company would not take the project on. However, Prudential Insurance offered to put up £625,000, and Towle approached Malcolm McAlpine, a partner in the building company Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons, civil engineering contractors, offering him the construction contract if McAlpine's would match the Gordon Hotels' contribution of £315,000. This was agreed. Gordon Hotels, the Prudential, and McAlpine planned to form a new company to build and own the new hotel, but the Prudential added a condition to its funding: it would put up £350,000, the cost of buying the house, but no more than that until building work to the value of £200,000 had been completed. McAlpine's refused to agree to this, and the Prudential withdrew; McAlpine's immediately agreed to step into the shoes of the Prudential, but that meant putting nearly a million pounds into the venture, which had a construction contract worth an estimated £900,000.
The Dorchester House Syndicate Ltd was incorporated in August 1929, with exactly half the shares owned by Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons, 40 per cent by Gordon Hotels, and 10 percent by Towle himself. McAlpine's bought the property on behalf of the new company, and Dorchester House was quickly demolished.
The BBC had also shown an interest in purchasing the property and had almost done so prior to the McAlpine acquisition, but instead it turned its attention to Foley House. The purchase and destruction of Dorchester House was part of significant redevelopment which took place on Park Lane around the same time; it followed soon after the gutting of Grosvenor House and the building of the Grosvenor House Hotel, which had been completed in 1929.
Construction
Sir Owen Williams was commissioned to design the new hotel, using reinforced concrete to allow the creation of large internal spaces without support pillars, but he abandoned the project in February 1930 and was replaced with William Curtis Green. James Maude Richards, hired by Williams, served as an architectural assistant within the all-engineer staff. Percy Morley Horder, consulting architect to Gordon's Hotels, had not been consulted during the design process and, after seeing the plan, resigned from the project, remarking to The Observer that the design was ill-suited for the location, assuming the concrete was to be left unpainted, and that the insulation would be minimal. Some 40,000 tonnes of earth were excavated to make room for the hotel's extensive basement which is one-third of the size of the hotel above the surface. The upper eight floors were erected in just 10 weeks, supported on a massive thick reinforced concrete deck that forms the roof of the first floor. With the development of the Dorchester, concerns were raised that Park Lane would soon look like New York City's Fifth Avenue.
1931–1945
On Saturday 28 March 1931, Queen Mary was given a tour of the new Dorchester Hotel by Sir Francis Towle, the managing director of Gordon Hotels."COURT & PERSONAL: The Queen on Saturday inspected the Dorchester Hotel, London", Yorkshire Post, Monday 30 March 1931, p. 8 The hotel was launched by Lady Astor at a grand luncheon on Saturday 18 April, with a speech by J. H. Thomas, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs."GOING ON FOR EVER?", Western Daily Press, Monday 20 April 1931, p. 5 It opened for business on Monday 20 April"THE DORCHESTER HOTEL OPENS TO-DAY", Daily Express (London), Monday 20 April 1931, p. 19 and on Tuesday 21 April this was celebrated by a "Lace Ball" in the ballroom."A Social Diary", Yorkshire Post, Monday 20 April 1931 , p. 6
The Dorchester quickly gained a reputation as a luxury hotel. During the 1930s it became known as a haunt of numerous writers and artists such as poet Cecil Day-Lewis, novelist Somerset Maugham, and the painter Sir Alfred Munnings. There were prestigious literary gatherings, including "Foyles Literary Luncheons", an event the hotel still hosts. Shortly after the opening, Sir Percival David, a leading admirer of Chinese porcelain, moved his growing collection from the Mayfair Hotel to the Dorchester, where he kept it in his suites for many years. Danny Kaye began appearing in cabaret at the hotel in the 1930s, initially earning £50 a week. Many blues and jazz artists appeared at the hotel, including Alberta Hunter and the Jack Jackson Orchestra. In 1934, Hunter was the vocalist on Jackson's recordings of Noël Coward's "I Travel Alone" and Cole Porter's "Miss Otis Regrets" at the hotel; both Coward and Porter were fans. It also became a rendezvous for many businessmen; it was at the Dorchester that BP formed a joint Collaborate Committee with ICI in 1943.
During the Second World War, the strength of its construction gave the hotel the reputation of being one of London's safest buildings. On its opening, Sir Malcolm McAlpine declared it to be "bomb-proof, earthquake-proof and fireproof," and the only damage inflicted on the building by the Luftwaffe during the war was several broken windows. Some felt the communal air-raid shelter in the basement to be insufficiently exclusive and retreated to the hotel's underground gymnasium and Victorian-style Turkish baths, which had been converted into a shelter by Victor Cazalet. Its wartime clientele included Lord Halifax (Foreign Minister), Oliver Stanley (Minister for War), Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal (Chief of the Air Staff), Duff Cooper (with his wife Lady Diana Cooper), Oliver Lyttleton (President of the Board of Trade) and Duncan Sandys (Financial Secretary to the War Office). Halifax and his wife took eight rooms as well as a chapel in the hotel, and when possible he enjoyed trysts with his mistress, Alexandra "Baba" Metcalfe, who was also staying in the hotel and concurrently having an affair with Dino Grandi, Mussolini's representative Italian ambassador in London.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower took a suite on the first floor (now the Eisenhower Suite) in 1942 after having previously stayed at Claridge's, and in 1944 he made it his headquarters; Kay Summersby, his chauffeur and purported mistress, and Roosevelt's representative Averell Harriman also stayed there thanks to its reputation as a safe haven. During a dinner party which Harriman attended in the Dorchester, the bombing was so intense that guests came down to join him there as it was safer than in the upper-floor rooms. Bostonian Sherry Mangan of Time was one of several American correspondents who stayed at the hotel during the war, meeting the Trotskyist Sam Gordon in 1944, who asked if the Dorchester was safe from air raids, to which Mangan assured him that "every fifth columnist in London is staying here". Other hotel guests reflected the directors' wide-ranging political beliefs: it was at once the base for the Zionist movement's leaders, including Chaim Weizmann, as well as a group of upper-class British anti-Semites, including Margaret Greville. According to Cecil Beaton the clientele was a "mixed brew"; to its wartime chronicler, it was "a building in which the respectable and the dubious mixed by the thousand, knocking back cocktails and indulging in careless talk". In March 1945, Ernest Hemingway and Time correspondent and lover Mary Welsh stayed at the Dorchester, where they were entertained by Emerald, Lady Cunard, who had a three-room suite on the seventh floor.
Post-war
In 1949, the 150th anniversary of Alexander Pushkin's birth was organised at the hotel by the Society of Cultural Relations with the USSR, attended by the Soviet chargé d'affaires, the Polish ambassador, the Romanian minister, and Cecil Day-Lewis, raising MI5's suspicions that he still had communist sympathies, a contention he later denounced. The Dorchester became one of the most high-profile hotels in London for actors, entertainers, and royalty, and the ballroom and banqueting rooms became known for hosting events, particularly with charities. Diners at the Dorchester included Cyril Connolly, T. S. Eliot, Harold Nicolson, Edith Sitwell, Ralph Richardson, Elizabeth Taylor, Alfred Hitchcock, and Barbra Streisand. Queen Elizabeth II attended the Dorchester when she was a princess on the day prior to the announcement of her engagement to Philip Mountbatten on 10 July 1947. Philip also held his stag night party at the hotel, which has been documented in a plaque. Comedian Kenneth Horne died of a heart attack on stage at the Dorchester on 14 February 1969, while hosting the annual Guild of Television Producers' and Directors' Awards ceremony.Obituary.