American Horror Story: The Creeptastic Hotel and Its Real-Life Inspirations

On paper, the Hotel Cortez looks like a killer deal. The photos show a super-swank Art Deco lobby with custom carpets and furniture, outrageous elevator gates and leaded windows. The bar makes you want to sidle up in a pencil skirt and order a Manhattan. If the rooms and hallways are a bit threadbare and the beds appear to be decomposing, that’s OK. The place has great bones.

So you can understand why New York clothing designer Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson) wanted to jump on the “whisper listing” and purchase the place, sight unseen, to establish an elegant penthouse for himself and his son, with an atelier (mostly ready-to-wear) on the next floor down.

But first, he’ll have to deal with the hotel’s longtime residents, including a blood thirsty countess (Lady Gaga); her moody/hunky consort, Donovan (Matt Bomer); his mother, who handles the desk (Kathy Bates); the cross-dressing concierge, Liz Taylor (Denis O’Hare); hooker Sally (Sarah Paulson); and that handsome detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley) who’s been snooping about.

And that’s just in the first episode of “American Horror Story: Hotel,” premiering Wednesday, Oct. 7, on FX. It’s not for the faint of heart; no “American Horror Story” episode ever is. The lush production style alone will make you swoon.

To create this eerie but elegant bit of real estate, four-time Emmy-nominated production designer Mark Worthington had to start from scratch. He had the Hotel Alexandria on 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles in mind for a vague sense of location, and used the elaborate Art Deco front of the Oviatt Building on Olive Street for the exteriors.

Meanwhile, co-creator/executive producer/writer/director Ryan Murphy’s story lines were loosely inspired by downtown’s former two-star hotel the Cecil. Part of it has been rebranded – with good cause, as the hotel comes with its own share of death and ghost stories – into a hostel hybrid called Stay on Main.

The former Cecil, at 640 South Main on Skid Row, was home to serial killers Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, and Jack Unterweger, aka the Vienna Strangler. The building was also the site of a number of suicides and much criminal activity, including the unsolved rape and murder of Goldie Osgood, the so-called Pershing Square Pigeon Lady, in 1964. Most recently, in 2013, a woman by the name of Elisa Lam was caught on video in an elevator behaving strangely, and later found dead in the hotel’s rooftop water tank after complaints of low water pressure and flooding.

Lady Gaga fans in the know about “American Horror Story” have been flocking to the hotel, TMZ reports, many of them trying to book what’s now known as “the Elisa room,” though it’s currently off-limits. Not unlike the mysterious Room 64 in AHS’s Hotel Cortez.

But the Cecil was probably never as stylish as the Cortez. Room 64, the lobby,  bar, elevator, penthouse suite, hallways and more were all built to size on Stage 16 of the Fox Lot, which is now arguably the scariest piece of real estate in Los Angeles.

Since the hotel is called Cortez, and Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes was noted for conquering and eventually destroying the Aztec culture, Worthington told Yahoo Real Estate, he used subtle Aztec themes throughout.

You’ll note Mayan pyramid shapes in many shots, especially behind Iris (Kathy Bates) at the front desk. Pay close attention to the figures and sun rays on the window above the bar and on the elevator screens, and you’ll see more.

Classic Stanley Kubrick films inspired Worthington as well. He cites “A Clockwork Orange” (meets Willy Wonka) when describing the design of the Countess’s vampire hive play room. He cites “The Shining” when discussing the design of the hotel hallways. Naturally. (We ran a story and slideshow about the real-life hotel from “The Shining” a while ago, back when our site was Yahoo Homes. Click here to see them.) 

“This set is an example of why we film in Los Angeles,” says Worthington, who would like to stem the tide of runaway production. “The craftsmanship here is unmatched.”

He noted that all the luxe-looking surfaces are faux–painted by experts. The marble and wood all look stunningly real. “Bruce Smith and his crew are the most talented scene painters in the world. You couldn’t do a production like this, with this speed, anywhere else,” says Worthington. The crew had a mere seven weeks to build sets.

Equal care and consideration was given to the off-lot locations. Worthington says he wanted them all to be classic California: For example, John Lowe’s house is a Spanish style with arched windows and a tile roof, a five-minute commute from the Fox Lot.

When Lady Gaga and Matthew Bomer go out for a night on the town to make “friends,” L.A. residents will recognize that it’s the Hollywood Forever Cemetery through which the ghoulish couple stride. They sit on the lawn to watch a black-and-white horror film projected on the side of the mausoleum, as local cinephiles really do every summer.

Though the look and feel of the production is seminal seedy Los Angeles, and though local viewers will recognize a number of locations, Worthington doesn’t anticipate this season will have quite the same effect on the local real estate market that the first season of “American Horror Story” did: The famous “Murder House” on Westchester Place in Los Angeles became a bit of anattraction. The six-bedroom, five-bathroom Alfred F. Rosenheim Mansion, as it is officially known, was listed in 2011 for $4.5 million, but after its starring role in “American Horror Story,” the listing price shot up to $17 million, according to Curbed.

It shouldn’t startle anyone to find out that the exorbitant price killed any chances of selling it for a few years. It finally sold earlier this year for a more reasonable price of $3.2 million.

But the “American Horror Story” legacy remains. Worthington is in touch with the new owners, who said that more than a hundred tour buses and fans pass by every hour. We don’t even want to think about what it’ll be like on Halloween this year.

One thing is certain: Trick-or-treaters will not be knocking on the door of Hotel Cortez and expecting Lady Gaga to be there handing out candy.

Love outrageous real estate? Come ogle with us:

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