A hotel suite with a swimming pool, or space for basketball? Proper Hotel in Los Angeles ticks the boxes for over-the-top
- The Downtown LA Proper Hotel, in a 1920s building that housed a private club for Los Angeles’ business elite, offers a new take on deluxe urban hotels
- With two restaurants, vintage furnishings, a suite with its own pool and another converted from a basketball court, the hotel awaits a post-Covid travel rebound
Hotels with indoor pools have been around for decades. But at the Downtown LA Proper Hotel, there’s a 2,777 sq ft (258 square metre) suite with its own indoor swimming pool, and it’s much bigger than the one on the roof shared by other guests.
Another suite has enough room and height to play basketball – because it used to be a basketball court, back when the Renaissance Revival-style tower on Broadway was a private club for the city’s business elite, with athletic facilities, fine dining and rooms for overnight stays.
The building, completed in 1926 as the Commercial Club in Los Angeles, has regained those elements after changing a lot over the years, usually not for the better. Now it’s owned by a Santa Monica, California-based company that specialises in large-scale makeovers of historic properties to create uncommon accommodation for travellers weary or wary of upmarket chain hotels.
“We call it a looser kind of luxury,” says Brian De Lowe, president of Proper Hospitality. “It’s our unique take” on deluxe urban hotels.
The company, founded in 2015, is calculating that the reviving South Broadway neighbourhood where the Downtown LA Proper Hotel stands will keep improving. The location at Broadway and 11th Street is six blocks east of Crypto.com Arena (formerly the Staples Centre) and entertainment complex LA Live, on the edge of the Fashion District, South Park and the Historic Core.