Stay on Main is a budget hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, located at 640 S. Main Street, opened in 1927. It has 600 guest rooms. The hotel has a checkered history, but as of 2017 it was being renovated and redeveloped into a mix of hotel rooms and residential units.
History
The Cecil was built in 1924 by hotelier William Banks Hanner, as a destination for business travelers and tourists. Designed by Loy Lester Smith in the Beaux Arts style, the hotel cost $1 million to complete and boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. Hanner had invested confidently in the enterprise, with the knowledge that several similar hotels had been established elsewhere downtown, but within five years of its opening, the United States sank into the Great Depression. Although the hotel flourished as a fashionable destination through the 1940s, the decades beyond saw the hotel decline, as the nearby area known as Skid Row became increasingly populated with transients. As many as 10,000 homeless people lived within a four-mile radius. By the 1950s, the hotel had gained a reputation as a residence for transients. In 2007, a portion of the hotel was refurbished after new owners took over. In 2011, the Cecil Hotel was rebranded as "Stay on Main", complete with a new website; its old website, thececilhotel.com, expired at the end of 2013. In 2014, the hotel was sold to New York City hotelier Richard Born for $30 million, and another New York-based firm, Simon Baron Development, acquired a 99-year ground lease on the property. Matt Baron, president of Simon Baron, said he was committed to the preservation of architecturally or historically significant components such as the hotel's grand lobby, but his company planned to completely redevelop the interior and fix the "hodgepodge" work that had been done in more recent years. Beyond renovating rooms, the developer also plans a rooftop pool, gym, and lounge. Construction is projected to be complete by 2021. In February 2017, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deem the Cecil a Historic-Cultural Monument, because it is representative of an early 20th century American hotel and because of the historic significance of its architect's body of work.
Reputation for violence and suicide
As the area where the Cecil Hotel is located began to decline, suicides and other violent deaths on the premises became more frequent. The first documented suicide at the Cecil was reported in 1931, when a guest named W.K. Norton died in his room after taking poison capsules. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, more suicides at the Cecil occurred. By the 1960s, longtime residents had begun to call the Cecil "The Suicide." In addition to suicides, the Cecil's history includes other kinds of violence and disturbing happenings. It also became a notorious rendezvous spot for adulterous couples, drug activity, and prostitution. In 1947, Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the media as the Black Dahlia, was rumored to have been spotted drinking at the Cecil's bar in the days before her notorious, and to date unsolved, murder. In 1964, a retired telephone operator named "Pigeon Goldie" Osgood, who had been a well known and well liked long-term resident at the hotel, was found dead in her room. She had been raped, stabbed, and beaten, and her room ransacked. A man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was charged with Osgood's murder, but he was later cleared; her death remains unsolved. Perhaps most infamously, in the 1980s the hotel was rumored to be the residence of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the "Night Stalker". Ramirez had been a regular presence on the skid row area of Los Angeles, and according to a hotel clerk who claims to have spoken to him, is rumored to have stayed at the Cecil for a few weeks. Ramirez may have engaged in part of his killing spree while staying there. Another serial killer, Austrian Jack Unterweger, stayed at the Cecil in 1991, possibly because he sought to copy Ramirez's crimes. While there, he strangled and killed at least three sex workers, for which he was convicted in Austria. He hanged himself shortly after his conviction. In 2013, the Cecil became the focus of renewed attention when surveillance footage of a young Canadian student, Elisa Lam, behaving erratically in the hotel's elevator, went viral. The video depicts Lam repeatedly pressing the elevator's buttons, walking in and out of the elevator, and possibly attempting to hide from someone. It was recorded shortly before her disappearance; her naked body was subsequently discovered in a water supply cistern on the hotel roof, following complaints from residents of odd-tasting water and low pressure. How she got into the cistern remains a mystery. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled her death accidental due to drowning, with bipolar disorder being a "significant" factor.
Cultural references
On March 27, 1987, the band U2 performed an impromptu live concert on the rooftop of a one-story building on the corner of 7th and Main in Downtown Los Angeles, next door to the Cecil Hotel. The performance, with the hotel featured as a backdrop, was filmed and commercially released as a music video for the release of the band's song "Where the Streets Have No Name". The hotel is also known as the inspiration for Barton Fink. It was also the inspiration for American Horror Story season 5, "". It was the setting for The NoSleep Podcast season 3 episode, "The Cecil Hotel", which adapted a horror fiction short story loosely based on the death of Elisa Lam that took place in the hotel in 2013. The hotel can be seen in the background of Blink-182's video "The Rock Show". A song from the group's fourth album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. They can be seen throwing money down from a single story rooftop located next door to the Cecil Hotel.
