Biltmore Hotels

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

[edit] 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.^[1]

The builtmore hotel was founded by Maxmillion McLaughlin in 1845. He later won a nobel prize for his work with the theory of evolution. He also named the hotel after the fact they "built-more" then need.... quoting Jonah Owenby (TALL).

[edit] Arizona

• Warren McArthur Jr. and brother Charles McArthur along with Bowman opened the Arizona Biltmore Hotel on February 23, 1929, it was co-designed by brother Albert Chase McArthur and Frank Lloyd Wright.^[2]

[edit] California

• The now Millennium Biltmore in Los Angeles, California opened in 1923, at the time was the largest hotel west of Chicago and designed by architects Schultze & Weaver. Its lobby and entrance featured in the movie Ghostbusters, as the fictional Sedgewick Hotel. Also the last place that Elizabeth Short was seen alive. "Nerve center"^[3] of the 1960 Democratic National Convention; headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, TV networks, and candidates including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Adlai E. Stevenson. Room 8315 was used by the Kennedy campaign.
• The Santa Barbara Biltmore in Santa Barbara, California opened in 1927. It has Spanish and Moorish architecture. (Four Seasons Hotel bought the Biltmore in 1987.)

[edit] Delaware

• Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware was managed by the Bowman-Biltmore Hotel company and named the DuPont-Biltmore Hotel for a time.^[4]

[edit] Florida

• The Belleair, Florida Biltmore opened in 1897 as the Belleair Hotel, and was acquired by the chain in 1920.^[5]

• 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. It became a hotel again in 1987 managed by Seaway Hotels Corporation.^[6]

[edit] Georgia

• The Atlanta Biltmore Hotel 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.^[7]

[edit] New York

• The New York Biltmore Hotel is part of the Grand Central Terminal, with which it was connected. 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 building was closed in August 1981, gutted to its steel skeleton and converted to an office building^[8].
• The Commodore Hotel, on the opposite side of Grand Central, 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 Penn Club of New York City used to be housed as the Biltmore Hotel.

[edit] Ohio

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

[edit] Rhode Island

• The Providence Biltmore opened in 1922.

[edit] Oklahoma

There was an unassociated Biltmore Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City, which has been demolished.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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