A few days ago, the Los Angeles Times took a deep dive into the checkered history of the Aztec Hotel, a landmark along Route 66 in Monrovia, California.
For the uninitiated, Robert Stacy-Judd designed the 44-room hotel, built about 1925 and contains distinctive Mayan Revival architecture.
Celebrities such as Bing Crosby, Clark Gable and Tom Mix hung out there during Hollywood’s Golden Age. It’s long been reputed to be haunted.
It was designated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
But by the 1980s, it descended into a seedy flophouse. Then it became the Brass Elephant restaurant and bar.
Owners came and went in recent decades, struggling to find a useful and profitable purpose for the property. The building was closed for renovations in 2012 and has remained shuttered since.
The Times reports that Kathie Reece, a singer and public relations representative for a Cadillac dealer, now owns the Aztec.
Hugo Martin, assistant editor for the Times, in a Times newsletter pointed out that the Aztec Hotel always seemed to struggle.
In 1933, a local newspaper story dubbed it a “White Elephant” and described the crude murals and the dark interior as “too barbaric, too weird, too gloomy.” […]
Robert Di Do, a board member at the Monrovia Historical Society, said he believes the hotel’s biggest problem was that the rooms did not have bathrooms — guests had to share bathrooms on each floor. (Bathrooms and air-conditioning units have since been added to the rooms.)
“It never really caught on as a hotel,” he said.
Martin also reports the Aztec is for sale for $15 million.
Vicky Hansen, a member of Monrovia’s Historic Preservation Commission, said the hotel can be rejuvenated — if someone is willing to spend the money and bring it up to modern standards.
(Image of the Aztec Hotel in Monrovia, California, by Steve Walser via Flickr)