Travellers' Checks | Monuments to waste and bad taste, Moscow and Miami Hilton hotels and what they say about those cities
- The Fontainebleau Miami Beach, once a Hilton hotel, and the Moscow Leningradskaya, now a Hilton hotel, both opened in 1954
- One’s a beacon of capitalist decadence – think James Bond in Goldfinger – the other of Stalinist opulence; architecturally, both exemplify their time and place
Two impressive and very different cold war-era hotels will turn 65 this year. Opened in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1954, the seductively curved Fontainebleau was the first and most famous hotel designed by the flamboyant Morris Lapidus. With its extravagant interiors, oversized pool and swanky nightclub featuring the likes of Frank Sinatra, who shot several films and television shows on the premises, it was a beacon of American post-war excess and capitalist decadence.
The first post-credit scene of Goldfinger (1964) begins high above the hotel as a helicopter-borne camera sweeps down to find James Bond enjoying a poolside massage, amidst a bevy of bathing beauties.
The out-of-fashion Fontainebleau was saved from bankruptcy by its new owners in 1978, and Hilton was brought in to manage its recovery. In 2005, the hotel changed hands again, and Hilton’s services were no longer required. The following year, Hilton attached its name to its first Russian hotel – now the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya.
First opened in 1954, this masterpiece of classic Stalinist architecture was the smallest of the Seven Sisters – a group of grandiose skyscrapers built on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s orders to showcase the might of otherwise low-rise Moscow to foreign visitors. He died a year before the opening of the 28-storey Leningradskaya, which was criticised for its wasteful opulence by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev. Its architect, Leonid Polyakov, was subsequently stripped of his coveted Stalin Prize.
Although reaching retirement age this year, both properties seem to be in their prime. They emerged from extensive renovations at almost the same time in 2008, and are as striking examples of their cultures today as when they first opened on either side of the Iron Curtain, in very different times.
The Halekulani Okinawa opens on the Japanese island in July
