Sunset Tower opened in 1931 as an apartment building on Sunset Boulevard, an Art Deco tower by the architect Leland A. Bryant that has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980. Hollywood names lived here, John Wayne, Howard Hughes and Frank Sinatra among them. The building opened as a hotel in 1988 and took back its original name after the hotelier Jeff Klein bought it in 2004 and had the designer Paul Fortune redo the interiors. The Tower Bar followed in 2005 and a refresh of the rooms and public spaces in 2018.
There are 81 rooms, and all ten room and suite categories have floor-to-ceiling windows. The city view is on the south side, where the ground falls away towards Century City and downtown, while rooms on the Sunset Boulevard side look across the Strip at the Hollywood Hills. The entry Superior Queen is about 350 sq ft (33 m²) with a queen bed, the Deluxe King about 400 sq ft (37 m²), and the Studio Suite about 550 sq ft (51 m²) with a separate living area. The suites climb to a Penthouse of about 2,000 sq ft (186 m²) with wraparound terraces. The Deluxe rooms and suites are dusty pink and cream, with bathroom wallpaper by the illustrator Donald Robertson that draws scenes from the hotel's life, from the Sunset Boulevard sign to a martini in the Tower Bar.
What the hotel is chosen for is that old Hollywood is still in use. The Tower Bar and Restaurant is a ground-floor room with 80 seats, walnut-panelled walls, a fireplace, niche booths and live jazz in the evening. The hotel places Bugsy Siegel's apartment here, and the gangster was arrested in the building in 1944, on a bookmaking charge, in an associate's apartment. The Terrace, indoors and on a lanai overlooking the pool, serves breakfast, lunch and an afternoon menu, with the city laid out beyond. Sunset Plaza's boutiques are twelve minutes' walk away, and The Comedy Store three.
The trade is money and scale. The entry room costs about $595 a night before tax on a Tuesday in early December, and the bill adds 16.695% hotel tax, a nightly amenity fee of $52.43 and, if you have a car, $75 a night for valet parking. There is one small outdoor pool, for guests only, and no spa, though the gym is open 24 hours, and the beach is a drive away. Book it for a first Los Angeles trip built around old Hollywood, a couples' weekend or an anniversary dinner. If you want a beach, a big pool scene or a spa, this is the wrong address.
