Hotel Casa del Mar

The Hotel Casa del Mar is a historic luxury hotel located on the beach in Santa Monica, California. It is owned and operated by the Edward Thomas Collection of Hotels (ETC Hotels). The building was constructed by brothers E.A. "Jack" Harter and T.D. "Til" Harter, doing business as the H & H Holding Company, at a cost of $2 million. It opened as Club Casa del Mar, a private beach club, on May 1, 1926. Designed by Los Angeles architect Charles F. Plummer to reflect an Italian Renaissance Revival aesthetic, the glory days of the hotel spanned 1926-41, as it became one of the most successful beach clubs in Southern California, popular with socialites and Hollywood celebrities. In 1941, the US Navy took over the building, utilizing it for enlisted soldiers during World War II. By 1960, the hotel was shuttered. In 1967, Charles E. Dederich reopened the building as the Synanon Foundation, a drug rehabilitation program. In 1978, Nathan Pritikin turned the building into the Pritikin Longevity Center, a nutrition and health care facility that closed in 1997. The Edward Thomas Hospitality Corporation, owners of the adjacent Shutters on the Beach Hotel, acquired the property in November 1997 and spent over$50 million restoring and converting it into a luxury hotel. Architecture firms HLW International and Thomson Design Associates worked to preserve the interior and exterior of the seven-story building, reviving the hotel's original 1920s European style. It reopened as Hotel Casa del Mar in October 1999. In February 2008, designer Darrell Schmitt completed a multimillion-dollar remodel of all 129 guest rooms and suites, adding new furniture, artwork, flat-screen televisions, windows, wallpaper, mirrors and drapes. Los Angeles magazine said the renovation had restored the hotel "to its Gatsbyesque glory." In 2014, designer Michael S. Smith redesigned the hotel's lobby, introducing striped cabana-style sitting areas in the lobby and coast-themed artwork, among other additions.