Millennium Biltmore: a Grand Hotel Born of Hollywood Dreams

Kwek Leng Beng, Chairman of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, has had tremendous success owning and renovating some of the world?s greatest historic hotels. The Galeria at the Millennium Biltmore Long before construction of the Millennium Biltmore, proclaimed as a "monument to the growth and prosperity of the city," could begin it had to be designed. And on December 17, 1921, architects-designers Schultze and Weaver began what the media of the time called "one of the brightest stars in the firmament of local enterprise." It certainly promised to be and become the largest construction project in the history of Los Angeles. Influenced heavily by Italian and Spanish Renaissance architecture, the architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver blueprinted the hotel in just 47 days. The partnership of Leonard Schultze and S. Fullerton Weaver had left indelible work in New York with the Waldorf Astoria in 1931, and also on other grand Gotham projects. The Millennium Biltmore was the firm?s first major commission, but had the blessing of John McEntee Bowman, a Canadian-born hotelier who was the founding president of Bowman-Biltmore hotel, built in New York in 1913. Bowman, who had silent movie star good looks himself was coming into one of the leading Hotel names in the world. Ward Morehouse III?s love affair with grand hotels began long before he wrote his first landmark book, The Waldorf-Astoria: America?s Gilded Dream, which was followed by Inside the Plaza: An Intimate Portrait of the Ultimate Hotel. His father, the late drama critic Ward Morehouse, lovingly introduced his son to the glamorous life of luxurious hotels. He is a former staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, Broadway columnist for the New York Post and author of nine other books and two plays, The Actors and If It Was Easy, produced Off-Broadway.