The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

If there’s one thing that’s constant in Hollywood, it’s a process of continual reinvention. The 1927-vintage Hollywood Roosevelt was the site of the very first Academy Awards, and hosted everyone who’s anyone in the American entertainment world. And now, thanks to a huge renovation by Yabu Pushelberg, one of the world’s top hotel-industry architecture firms, it’s once again looking as glamorous as it did during Hollywood’s golden age.

The tower rooms are true to the Spanish Colonial heritage of the hotel’s history, even as they’ve been thoroughly updated to please the contemporary eye. And the cabana rooms, which surround the famous swimming pool with its David Hockney underwater mural, are steeped in the mid-century modernism that ruled when Marilyn Monroe was a guest — it’s for good reason that one of the cabana suites is named for this most glamorous of former residents.

Public Kitchen & Bar is the new Hollywood Roosevelt’s flagship dining venue, an upscale American bistro, while 25 Degrees is a similarly glamorous burger joint. Tropicana is the poolside café and bar, and is the heart of the hotel’s daytime scene, while in the evening the revelry continues in the Spare Room, a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with a two-lane bowling alley, and the Library Bar, the kind of dark and intimate venue where one imagines the real business of Hollywood gets done.