The first Ace Hotel was opened in 1999. Friends Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick purchased and transformed a Seattle halfway house into an affordable hotel that would appeal to the creative class. Calderwood and Weigel had previously founded Rudy's, a reinvigorated traditional barbershop concept they started in Seattle, which eventually expanded to more than a dozen West Coast locations. They also founded Neverstop, a marketing and advertising company. In 2006, Jack Barron and Michael Bisordi joined the team as owners. That year the group opened a second hotel in Portland, followed by properties in Palm Springs and New York in 2009. In 2011, Ace Hotel collaborated with the cosmetics brand uslu airlines to create a nail polish sold in the hotels' mini-bars. In 2013, an Ace Hotel opened in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London. The company opened a property in Panama City, Panama, as the American Trade Hotel. Calderwood had defined a goal of opening a new Ace Hotel every "one to two years". He died at age 47 in November 2013, shortly after the opening of the London Shoreditch hotel. Soon after, the downtown Los Angeles location opened in a former theatre, followed by a hotel in Pittsburgh in late 2015 and in New Orleans in spring 2016. A location in Kyoto, Japan designed by Kengo Kuma opened in summer 2020.
Locations
According to Calderwood, the style and furnishing of each Ace property is designed to reflect its location, with an eye towards re-imagining properties that are "challenged."
Ace Hotel Seattle is a former Salvation Army halfway house located in the Belltown neighborhood.
Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs, CA is a converted Howard Johnson motel, formerly a Westward Ho. King's Highway, the hotel's on-site diner, is a converted Denny's. There are two bars, the Amigo Room, and poolside, the Short Bus. The remodel was a collaboration with L.A.-based design firm, Commune.
Ace Hotel New Orleans opened in March 2016 in a 1928 Art Deco building in New Orleans' Warehouse District.
Ace Hotel Chicago opened on July 1, 2017. This is Ace's first ground-up build. Situated in Chicago's West Loop, it features a lobby restaurant called 'City Mouse', 7th floor bar 'Waydown', and the first Stumptown Coffee shop in Chicago.
Ace Hotel Kyoto opened on June 11, 2020. This is Ace Hotel's first property in Japan.
In popular culture
The 2011 episode "Blunderbuss" of the sketch comedy series Portlandia had a sketch set at the "Deuce Hotel", where the obnoxiously hip staff hand out complimentary turntables and typewriters to all guests; it was a parody specifically of Ace Hotel Portland. On her song Ace, rapper Noname talks about being at Ace Hotel in London. Bon Iver makes a reference to the Ace Hotel Los Angeles in the song "33 "GOD"" on the album22, A Million.
