Los Angeles – Hotel Figueroa opened in Los Angeles about six years after women won the right to vote.
“It was built to be a place for professional women,” Connie Wang, general manager of Hotel Figueroa, told CBS News.
Hotel Figueroa was entirely funded and built by a pioneer group of women in 1926, a time when almost every hotel forbade women from getting a room unless they were accompanied by a man.
In the foyer hangs a painting of its first general manager, Maud Bouldin.
“She became famous for trekking across the country on a motorbike to take her first job here,” said Wang.
Many guests come for the hotel’s charm, unaware of its amazing history, such as how it was one of the first hotels to check-in unaccompanied women, according to Wang.
According to Wang, after 97 years, almost everything about Hotel Figueroa is exactly the same as it was.
“We wanted to make sure he still had a very strong sense of time and place,” Wang said.
“It was important to restore, not renovate,” she added.
Every piece of art in the hotel was created by women. When asked what she would be most proud to show the hotel’s founders, Wang replied, “How do we continue to embrace women in art just as they did in the 1920s and ’30s?”
And the pool has its own legend.
“There are rumors that it was built in the shape of a coffin to bury the patriarchy,” Wang said.
Jimmy Yokas
Thanks for reading CBS News.
Create your free account or login
for more features.
[ad_2]
