Bowman-Biltmore Hotels

Bowman-Biltmore Hotels was a chain created by hotel magnate John McEntee Bowman.

The name evokes the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore Estate, whose buildings and gardens within are privately owned historical landmarks and tourist attractions in Asheville, North Carolina, United States. The name has since been adopted by other unrelated hotels. For a time, the Bowman-Biltmore Hotels Corporation was a publicly traded company.

Contents 1 Arizona 2 California 3 Delaware 4 Florida 5 Georgia 6 New York 7 Ohio 8 Rhode Island 9 Cuba 10 Oklahoma 11 References 12 External links

Arizona

• The Arizona Biltmore Hotel was opened on February 23, 1929 by Warren McArthur Jr. and his brother Charles McArthur along with John Bowman. The Arizona Biltmore was co-designed by their brother the Chicago architect Albert Chase McArthur, who asked Frank Lloyd Wright to collaborate.^[1]

California

• The Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, now renamed the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, is located on Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles. When it opened in 1923 it was the largest hotel west of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. It was designed by the architectural firm of Schultze & Weaver. The Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel was the "Nerve center" of the 1960 Democratic National Convention; the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, the TV networks, and the candidates including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Adlai Stevenson. Room 8315 was used by the John Kennedy campaign.^[2]
• The Santa Barbara Biltmore, located in Montecito, California, on the Pacific Coast just south of Santa Barbara. A masterful synthesis of the Spanish Revival, Mediterranean Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival and Moorish Revival styles of architecture and landscape architecture. 'the Biltmore' opened in 1927. (Four Seasons Hotels bought the Santa Barbara Biltmore in 1987. Ty Warner acquired ownership of the hotel through his Ty Warner Hotels & Resorts in 2000, with a historically sensitive major restoration and services updating following.

Delaware

• Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware was managed by the Bowman-Biltmore Hotel company and named the DuPont-Biltmore Hotel for a time.^[3]

Florida

• The 'Belleair Biltmore' in Belleair, Florida, first opened in 1897 as the Belleair Hotel, and was acquired by the Biltmore chain in 1920.^[4]

• The Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel opened in 1926, by Bowman and George Merrick, in Coral Gables, Florida is a National Historic Landmark. It served as a hospital during World War II and as a VA Hospital and campus of the University of Miami medical school until 1968. The African American population was not allowed admittance until the civil rights movement caused the hotel to change its practices in the 1960s. It became a hotel again in 1987 managed by Seaway Hotels Corporation.^[5]

Georgia

• The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel, designed by Schultze & Weaver, opened in Atlanta, Georgia in 1924 at a cost of $6 million, it was organized by Coca-Cola heir William Candler, Holland Ball Judkins, and Bowman. It is today an office building.^[6]

New York

• The New York Biltmore Hotel, designed by Warren & Wetmore, was part of Terminal City, a massive complex of hotels and office buildings connected to Grand Central Terminal. For 23 years the New York Biltmore was the home to the Grand Central Art Galleries, founded in 1922 by John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark, and others.^[7] In 1942, the hotel was the location of the Biltmore Conference which was a meeting of mostly Zionist groups that produced the Biltmore Program, a series of demands regarding Palestine. The hotel was closed in August 1981 by Paul Milstein, gutted to its steel skeleton and converted to an office building.^[8] retaining only the Biltmore's famous Palm Court clock.
• The Commodore Hotel, also by Warren & Wetmore, was on the opposite side of Grand Central. It was bought by Donald Trump, similarly gutted to its steel skeleton in the 1970s, and converted to the Grand Hyatt New York, retaining the original floorplan, but nothing else.
• The Belmont Hotel, across 42nd St from Grand Central, was the tallest in the world when built in 1908. It was demolished in 1939.
• The Westchester Biltmore Country Club was founded by Bowman, who hired Walter Travis to design two golf courses in Westchester County, New York.
• The Roosevelt Hotel, also connected to Grand Central Terminal opened as a United Hotel and merged with the Bowman-Biltmore Group in 1929. This hotel was later purchased by Conrad Hilton in 1948, Realty Hotel ( New York Central Railroad) operated it until 1980 and today is a operated by Interstate Hotels and owned by Pakistan Airlines.

Ohio

The Dayton Biltmore Hotel is currently a retirement home; it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Rhode Island

• The Providence Biltmore opened in 1922.

Cuba

• The Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel in Havana was bought by Bowman and Charles Francis Flynn in 1919. It was featured in Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana where Jim Wormold joined the British secret service.^[9]

Oklahoma

There was an unassociated Biltmore Hotel, since demolished, in downtown Oklahoma City.

References

External links

• Movies filmed at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel from MoviePlaces.tv