Building Description Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia Pennsylvania
The Bellevue Stratford is a 20 story plus basements, steel framed, fireproof luxury hotel built in two stages, the first in 1902 - 1904 comprising the principal bulk of the building, including the Broad Street front, while the second, of 1910-1911 extended the rear guest room wings to the west and added new public rooms. The lower levels occupy nearly 100 percent of the site, while the upper levels, notched with light wells to benefit the guest rooms forming an E shaped plan occupy approximately 80 percent of the property area. It was designed by G. W. and H. D. Hewitt who gave it a richly plastic French Renaissance exterior on which the principal zones of use are indicated by changing articulation. The rusticated base contains lobbies, restaurants and ballrooms; the powerfully bayed wall above denotes the guest room floors, while the wonderfully picturesque efflorescence of mansards, dormers, and chimneys at the top marks another level of ball rooms and public spaces. At every turn exuberant ornament delights the eye.
The interior is correspondingly splendid, though less stylistically determined, being essentially a fusion of French Renaissance detail and baroque scale and embellishment. The colors of the marbleized columns, gilt ornament and brass and opalescent glass chandeliers impart the requisite note of Edwardian elegance to the lobbies, corridors, and grand ballrooms, making it in every sense a grand hotel rivalling the Plaza and the Pierre in New York. Spacious elevator lobbies, and larger than usual guest rooms give added comfort and pleasure.
The building has undergone a number of alterations, but most have been done with considerable sympathy so that the essential quality of the hotel remains evident.-The Broad Street entrance, originally framed by paired columns has been opened up with more glass, providing space for travel agents. The restaurants especially the Stratford Garden, and the Hunt Room have also been modernized, but with the underlying classy tone of the rooms maintained, though in the spare vocabulary of contemporary design. A majority of the 700 plus guest rooms had also been brought up to contemporary standards.
The Bellevue-Stratford was sold in June 1978 to the Richard I. Rubin Company for $8.25 million. Rubin undertook a $25-million restoration. The guest rooms were completely gutted and their number reduced from 725 to 565, while the public areas were painstakingly restored to their 1904 appearance. 44,000 square yards of carpet were imported from Ireland, 25 tons of marble came from Portugal and crystal chandeliers were sourced from Uruguay.
The hotel reopened on September 26, 1979, managed by Fairmont Hotels, as the Fairmont Hotel. The following year, Western International Hotels bought a 49-percent interest in the hotel and assumed management on November 15, 1980. They returned the hotel to its original name, Bellevue Stratford, and announced plans to construct a huge parking garage adjacent to the hotel. Two months later, Western International was itself renamed Westin Hotels, and the hotel was soon renamed The Westin Bellevue Stratford. By the mid-1980s, the hotel was struggling to fill its hundreds of rooms. Philadelphia had lower hotel occupancy rates than other major East Coast cities at the time, and a lengthy conflict between city and state officials over financing for a new convention center, which would eventually open in 1993, meant that demand for hotel rooms in Center City was even lower than expected. With an occupancy rate of 55 percent, far below the 65-70 percent necessary to break even, and having operated at a total cash loss of $25 million from 1979-1985, never once turning a profit since its restoration, the hotel's owners announced in January 1986 that it would close on February 2. A lawsuit by the union representing the hotel's 450+ employees over the short notice given to its members, resulted in an agreement to keep the hotel open until April 2, but with The Westin Bellevue Stratford's advance bookings transferred to other hotels as a result of the closure announcement, only two floors of guest rooms still in use, and only 10 to 15 guests a night in the enormous building by that point, the union accepted a settlement of $500,000 and a promise that the renovated hotel would remain a union shop and agreed to an earlier closing date. The Westin Bellevue Stratford closed on March 7, 1986.
The Rubin Company bought out Westin's stake in the hotel and again undertook extensive work on the building, at a cost of $100 million, designed by architects from RTKL Associates Inc. in Baltimore and the Vitetta Group-Studio Four of Philadelphia. The building's name was shortened to The Bellevue. The grand public areas on the ground floor were converted to 55,000 sq ft of retail space. A huge atrium was cut into the lobby and escalators were installed leading to an underground shopping area and food court. The parking garage adjacent to the hotel had a 70,000 sq ft fitness club built on top of it to serve the complex. The hotel rooms on floors 3 to 11 were converted into 280,000 sq ft of office space, entered through the original main entrance facing Broad Street, with the office portion opening on December 5, 1988.
The hotel portion was condensed to 170 guest rooms on floors 12-18. The hotel was entered through a small foyer on the ground floor facing Chancellor Court, with the lobby and public rooms on the remodeled 19th floor. The two domed ballrooms on that floor (the South and North Cameo rooms), were turned into the Ethel Barrymore Tea Room and a restaurant called Founders, with statues of Philadelphia fathers William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse, and Charles Wilson Peale. The middle wing of the E-shaped building was removed from the guest room floors 12 to 18, and the back side was sealed up, creating an atrium. The historic 19th-floor Rose Ballroom atop this middle wing was retained, however, standing on seven-story stilts which ran through the atrium.
The hotel portion reopened on April 1, 1989, as the Hotel Atop The Bellevue, managed under a 10-year lease by the Cunard Line. The hotel opened to protests by unionized former employees, because Cunard was not part of the agreement to rehire them and had not done so. Cunard's hotel division proved financially unsuccessful and soon folded. Cunard terminated its lease on the hotel on February 7, 1993. Interstate Hotels & Resorts of Pittsburgh assumed management in December 1994 and the hotel's name was shortened to match the whole multi-use complex, becoming The Bellevue. On December 1, 1996, Hyatt took over management of the hotel, placing it in their Park Hyatt boutique division and renaming it the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue. In 2007, the two restaurants and Founders bar were re-designed by Marguerite Rodgers as XIX (NINETEEN) Cafe, Bar and Restaurant. In 2009, all four balconies outside the cafe and restaurant were restored and opened to the public for the highest outside dining experience in the city. In 2010, the hotel was moved from the Park Hyatt to the Hyatt division and its name was shortened to Hyatt at The Bellevue. The hotel moved to The Unbound Collection division of Hyatt in March 2018, and was renamed The Bellevue Hotel.
