Restoring the Hotel Normandie

Hotel Normandie, a 1920s relic in L.A.’s Koreatown, has been purchased by architect Jingbo Lou, who expects to reopen it as a boutique hotel by the end of 2012. (Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times)

March 21, 2014 5:36 PM PT

The Hotel Normandie, a mid-Los Angeles inn with a checkered past, is on the way to becoming respectable again as its new owners labor to restore its Jazz Age charms.

Manager Hizir Centin waits at the front desk of the Hotel Normandie. (Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times)

Like many older Los Angeles buildings, Hotel Normandie was a mash-up of architectural styles -- Renaissance Revival on the outside and Spanish Revival on the inside -- when completed in 1928. (Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times)

Jingbo Lou, a Pasadena architect and preservationist, plans to spend $5 million turning Hotel Normandie into a 100-room boutique hotel. (Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times)

The brick structure at L.A.’s Normandie Avenue and 6th Street in its heyday was a four-story residence hotel intended to serve men living on their own. (Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times)

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Restoring the Hotel Normandie

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