American Horror Story: Real-Life Inspirations

Her death was ultimately ruled an accident, but her odd disappearance and the grainy security footage that documented her last hours alive at the Cecil Hotel inspired “American Horror Story: Hotel.”

Downtown LA’s creepy Cecil Hotel has a rich and violent past. The hotel was rebuilt in 1900 by hotelier William Banks Hanner as a destination for business travelers and tourists. Designed by Loy Lester Smith in the Beaux-Arts style, the hotel cost $1 million to complete and boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. Within five years of its opening, the Great Depression hit the US. Although the hotel flourished as a fashionable destination through the 1940s, the decades beyond saw the hotel decline. By the 1950s, the hotel had gained a reputation as a residence for transients.

Murders, Suicides, Killers

• When the Cecil Hotel began to decline, suicides and other violent deaths on the premises became more frequent. The first documented suicide at the Cecil was reported in 1931 when a guest named W.K. Norton died in his room after taking poison capsules.
• Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, more suicides at the Cecil occurred. By the 1960s, longtime residents had begun to call the Cecil “The Suicide.”
• In 1947, Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the media as the Black Dahlia, was rumored to have been spotted drinking at the Cecil’s bar in the days before her notorious and, to date unsolved, murder.
• In 1964, a retired telephone operator named “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, who had been a well known and well liked long-term resident at the hotel, was found dead in her room. She had been raped, stabbed, and beaten, and her room ransacked. Her death remains unsolved.
• In the 1980s the hotel was rumored to be the residence of serial killer Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the “Night Stalker”. Ramirez may have engaged in part of his killing spree while staying there.
• Another serial killer, Austrian Jack Unterweger, stayed at the Cecil in 1991, possibly because he sought to copy Ramirez’s crimes. While there, he strangled and killed at least three sex workers, for which he was convicted in Austria. He hanged himself shortly after his conviction.

(Reference: Wikipedia)

• In 2013, the Cecil (by then re-branded as the “Stay on Main”) became the focus of renewed attention when surveillance footage of a young Canadian student, Elisa Lam, went viral. The video depicts Lam repeatedly pressing the elevator’s buttons, walking in and out of the elevator, and possibly attempting to hide from someone. It was recorded shortly before her disappearance. Her naked body was subsequently discovered in a water supply cistern on the hotel roof, following complaints from residents of odd-tasting water and low pressure. Why she got into a cistern remains a mystery. Her odd disappearance and the grainy security footage that documented her last hours alive in the hotel inspired American Horror Story: Hotel.

Sean Hughes of Mandil Design was approached by his client to design a basement based on American Horror Story’s Hotel Cortez. The set for the series was created by Emmy-nominated production designer Mark Worthington who designed the hotel in the Beaux-Arts architectural style. In addition to the stunning Art Deco room details, Mandil Design created the carpet pattern based on the ficticious lobby of “Hotel Cortez.” Aztec Carpet & Rug took the pattern, sized it for the room and custom-printed the design onto carpet.

It was a very complicated installation. Our installers had to precisely center the geometric pattern in the room and around the posts.

Jim Rodriguez, owner Aztec Carpet & Rug

Visit Aztec Carpet & Rug on the 1st floor of the IDC Building.