Suites of San Francisco

Five years ago boutique hotel magnate Ian Schrager fell in love with San Francisco’s grande dame, the Clift Hotel. Commissioned for $1 million in 1913 by lawyer Frederick C. Clift, in a sumptuous Italian Reniassance style, the Clift was billed as the city’s first earthquake-and-fireproof hotel. Generations of San Franciscans have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries over prime-rib dinners in the French Room and sipped their first cocktails in the legendary Redwood Room bar. “It is doubtful whether any hotel on the Coast has endeared itself or established itself more firmly as part of the life of the city it occupies than has the Clift,” wrote Charles W. Meighan, the late editor of The Pacific Coast Architect magazine, in 1924 on the eve of the Clift’s first of many renovations.

The hotel’s latest incarnation has San Franciscans talking once more. When Schrager--the former 1970s New York City nightclub impresario of Studio 54 fame--purchased the hotel in 1998, the big question was whether he and that madcap French designer, Philippe Starck, would transform the city’s historic gem into another surreal Wonderland. In less than 20 years, Schrager has acquired properties in New York, Los Angeles and London, with three more in the works for New York City, another in Miami--and, closer to home, Santa Barbara’s Miramar. But Schrager calls the Clift in San Francisco his first “grown-up” project. “People say my hotels are for a younger crowd, but the Clift is a sophisticated adult hotel crossing all age boundaries.”

Working alongside Schrager is Starck, the internationally renowned design maverick who has created everything from a three-legged chair and a futuristic toothbrush to the unconventional rooms for then-President Francois Mitterrand’s lysee Palace in Paris. The duo excel in breaking the rules of hotel design. “My mission has been to bring some originality and creativity and ultimately a sense of humor back to the hotel landscape,” says Schrager. Starck, who works closely with Romanian designer Anda Andrei, completed the hotel’s two remaining suites last month: The 16th-floor Spanish Suite and the Penthouse directly below it. Both were part of the 1924 renovation that added three floors to the original 13-story building, as well as a new wing on Geary Street. At the time, Clift’s $3-million renovation was the talk of the town; today, it’s Schrager’s $50-million redux. According to Starck, the hotel’s new face-lift is “a strange cocktail of classicism, surrealism and modernity.” Nowhere is this more true than in the newly refurbished Spanish Suite. From the mid-1920s until the early ‘30s, Clift lived in this rooftop stone bungalow, which featured a private garden, Mediterranean-style furnishings and a hand-painted wood-beamed ceiling. But nearly eight decades--and almost as many renovations--later, the residence was no longer glamorous. “The first time I saw it, the residence was set up in a classroom-style setting,” Andrei recalls. “It had definitely seen better days.”

Above the dropped acoustical ceiling the designers discovered the remains of a former renovation--an elaborate plaster ceiling with medallions too perforated to save, as well as the original beamed ceiling. They decided to start fresh with a new 12-foot-high plaster ceiling, while refinishing the oak-paneled fireplace and floors. The team replaced a large beveled mirror with a hand-etched Venetian glass mirror, then draped walls with 350 yards of floor-to-ceiling gray velvet. Wood surrounds were added around doors and windows for drama, and traditional furnishings such as wing and tufted leather chairs were added. “We tried to bring back a sense of classic elegance,” says Andrei of the suite, which is now used for private functions.

A paneled fireplace, traditional chairs and pair of crystal chandeliers are among the Spanish Suite’s more staid fixtures. But the rest is pure Starck: a plastic trompe l’oeil cube table, laminated with a photo of a Louis XV table, sits next to a wing chair. Modern floor lamps wear shades with a laminated antique sconce motif, while light sconces--which resemble one half of a crystal vase--are mounted on mirror-and-stainless-steel frames around the room. “It’s art, light and mirror all at the same time--it’s magic,” says Starck. Yellow acrylic vase-shaped “Bohem pods,” which double as stools, surround a 6-foot-long bench in the corner. The pods, Starck adds, “are free objects to do with as you will. They can be stools, tables or you can stack them and make a sculpture to look at if you like.”

Directly below the suite, the Penthouse once sported wood panels with damask inserts and busy tie-back curtains and valances. A long turquoise leather sofa with an undulating back was perched in front of a fake fireplace, Andrei recalls. The design team updated the fabric panels by replacing them with wood and refinishing them in the same dark- brown hue of the original marquetry floors. They filled the fireplace with a dozen candles, which are lit for guests each night. Double-hung curtains--a shimmery sheer over satin--add depth and richness, while slipcovered tuxedo sofas keep company with Starck’s orange plexiglass coffee table cubes. One guest reportedly snapped a photo of his girlfriend posed inside the cube.

Lavender accents in the cashmere throws (one or two disappear every week, according to housekeeping) and Starck’s Wheelbarrow chair upholstered in a micro-fiber fabric are just a few signature touches. “I designed the chair especially for the hotel,” says Starck, whose mobile chair was inspired by a 1937 fashion photograph by Man Ray.

Though the property is full of the team’s iconic flair, the Clift breaks the mold of Schrager’s recent projects. The hotelier admits that the Clift isn’t “the usual dump I buy and fix up.” Typically he’s bought buildings in off areas, increasing their value by transforming them into emotional landscapes for the hip and trendy. Buying a beloved historic hotel was venturing into new territory.

Local residents were particularly concerned about what would become of their Redwood Room bar, which was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh in 1933 and paneled in curly redwood rumored to have been from a single tree. A committee of San Franciscans to Save the Redwood Room was formed, and local papers ran articles, cartoons and letters to the editor on the cause celebre. Starck and Schrager ultimately kept the redwood paneling, along with the Art Deco chandeliers, sconces and gilt ceiling, but jettisoned everything else--including the four reproduction Gustav Klimts that had been added in a 1978 remodel. “I detest anything fake,” says Starck, who ironically replaced the imposters with five redwood-framed, wall-mounted plasma TV screens that project the same Klimt images digitally, as well as original video art. “We restored the Redwood Room in our own way, not because of the committee, but because it was the right thing to do,” says Schrager. “Although everyone said they loved the Redwood Room, no one went there anymore. We wanted to bring back some of the glamour that had been lost with so many renovations and, at the same time, bring it into the 21st century.” This holds especially true for the lobby’s neutral backdrop of cool, gray polished Italian plaster walls, Italian Pietra Serena limestone floors and the hand-carved check-in desk. At first glance, the space seems uncharacteristically subdued. Then one notices a stool fashioned after a black bowler hat and a green apple, the 18-foot-high bronze fireplace, and Starck’s highly stylized version of a Louis XVI chair--three times actual size--a perfect perch for Edith Ann the next time she’s in town. “I like to open the doors into people’s brains,” explains Starck. “When they see [the room], they ask, what is this?” Schrager adds, “The perfect lobby is not about how it looks, but how it makes you feel. I want people to feel glamorous. I want to blow people away and try to lift their spirits. Hotels are not places to just come and sleep, but to have unique experiences.”