Hotel Bel-Air

The canyons of Los Angeles were once horse country, and clues to this lost culture are still there. The oval pool of the Hotel Bel-Air is one such artifact. Its shape traces the footprint of a former riding ring. The original buildings of the hotel were estateplanning offices, located next to the BelAir stables and built by the area’s developer, Alphonso Bell. In 1946 the stables and Bell’s offices were converted into a hotel by Texas businessman Joseph Drown and his partner, Ted Chanock. The men built a hideaway that had a feeling of Taroudant’s La Gazelle d’Or bred with the Ponderosa Ranch. The chaparral of the Santa Monica Mountains, tamed by a phalanx of gardeners, and a swan lake stuck in the middle—a perfect setting for L.A.’s ladies who lunch and for movie stars to discreetly wander the shady loggias. The Bel-Air has been closed for two years, and this month it is reopening, after a major renovation. A few new pink-painted outbuildings have been created, with 12 extra rooms built into the hillside and a spa featuring a bell tower. The hotel’s chintz-and-beige look has been banished, replaced by a beige-and-black look, a nod to French Deco, popular in Hollywood in the 30s. Gardens and swans live on. The pool remains the ghostly, glamorous shape of that forgotten equestrian ring. And the hotel’s incongruously dark bar, with its fire roaring in the heat of summer, is now a set piece of Hollywood Regency.

MATT TYRNAUER