London: Two Classic Hotels Transformed

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London’s grand hotels once appeared to be embodiments of serene continuity. Many had received their first guests in the 19th century and viewed the latest fashions with a degree of disdain. American visitors tended to admire the glossy patina bestowed by successive generations, but were less impressed by the Victorian plumbing. It all seemed immutable.

The Savoy

Then, unexpectedly, everything began to change. Over the past 10 years, virtually every notable hotel in London has had a comprehensive makeover, a process that culminated with the reopening of The Savoy in October of last year after a $350 million reconstruction.

On our recent trip, we arrived to find no obvious trace of the gloom engendered by the 2008 financial crash that had been hanging over the city on a previous visit. London seemed to have recovered its ebullience, and its citizens were counting down the days to the start of the Olympics on July 27, 2012. (Tickets went on sale March 15, and when the application process closed six weeks later, 1.8 million people had signed up for the 650 events and the Games were 50 percent oversubscribed.)

After our day flight from New York, it was already dark when we arrived in Savoy Court, just off the Strand. The lights of London’s Theatreland were still burning brightly, however, and their neon was reflected in the hotel’s exquisite new Lalique fountain. We were greeted in the lobby by an exceptionally friendly young receptionist, who offered to escort us to our room where registration formalities could be completed. As The Savoy was closed for nearly three years, virtually all the staff are recent hires, which had caused us to wonder whether the service would be sufficiently polished. But this first pleasant encounter turned out to be representative of many over the ensuing days.

In many ways, The Savoy has long been the most distinctive of London’s grand hotels, with an extraordinarily rich and glamorous history. Once part of a venerable group that included Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley, it was sold in 2005 to Saudi Prince Alwaleed, who appointed Fairmont Hotels & Resorts to manage the property. The name itself derives from Count Peter of Savoy, whose relative King Henry III gave him land beside the Thames in 1246, on which he built Savoy Palace.

In 1889, The Savoy became the first London hotel to boast electric lighting, electric elevators, steam heat and constant running hot water.

Fast-forward six centuries to 1880, when the site was purchased by impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte with the profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Having constructed the Savoy Theatre, Carte decided to open an adjoining hotel, which he financed with the proceeds of an extremely lucrative production of “The Mikado.” In 1889, The Savoy became the first London hotel to boast electric lighting, electric elevators, steam heat and constant running hot water. Not content with these innovations, Carte hired César Ritz as the manager and put Auguste Escoffier in charge of the kitchens.

From the beginning, The Savoy enjoyed a close relationship with the interlocking worlds of music and theater, and for the past 120 years, its character has always been more raffish and debonair than moneyed and aristocratic. It was not until the 1920s, however, that the hotel saw the full flowering of its personality. The Jazz Age and its accompanying style, art deco, transformed the Victorian hotel. A hydraulic stage was installed, and leading jazz musicians arrived from New York via transatlantic liner. George Gershwin gave the British premier of “Rhapsody in Blue” at the hotel in 1925. And in 1930, the internationally famous “Savoy Cocktail Book” was published. Its author, Harry Craddock, a U.S. citizen who had fled his native land during Prohibition, presided over the hotel’s celebrated American Bar. Craddock popularized the dry martini and invented several classic cocktails, including the notorious Corpse Reviver #2, a lethal blend of gin, Cointreau, Lillet, pastis and lemon juice.

The Savoy’s 268 rooms and suites reflect two contrasting threads of its history. Those facing the Strand have an art deco décor, while those overlooking the river are Edwardian in style. All have been comprehensively modernized and redesigned under the supervision of French interior design guru Pierre-Yves Rochon. The Savoy is unique among London’s established grand hotels in affording views of the Thames, so we had opted for a River Deluxe King room.

The view from The Savoy has long been considered one of London’s finest, and has been painted by artists of the rank of Whistler and Monet. (Indeed, one of the hotel’s nine lavish Personality Suites is named for Monet, a distinction shared with Frank Sinatra!) Upriver, to our right, the face of Big Ben glowed above the Houses of Parliament. In the foreground, Cleopatra’s Needle, an Egyptian obelisk dating from the 15th century B.C., was silhouetted against the London Eye, a 443-foot-tall Ferris wheel erected to mark the beginning of the third millennium. And to our left, Waterloo Bridge spanned the Thames to the floodlit National Theatre on the South Bank.

Over the next three days, we found the room to be flawlessly comfortable, and all of its amenities functioned without a hitch. Effective soundproofing created a tranquil atmosphere that was in delightful counterpoint to the ceaseless flow of black taxis and red double-deckers along The Embankment, as well as the procession of ferries, pleasure craft and police boats scudding across the choppy surface of the Thames. A modern, spacious, well-lit bath provided a walk-in shower with a huge rainfall showerhead, a deep Edwardian claw-foot tub and lavish quantities of towels. And thanks to the comprehensive reconstruction, the plumbing and water pressure were of a standard that you would expect in a new hotel. Throughout our stay, room service was both prompt and polite.

The Savoy has two principal public areas. The main lobby is a scene of opulent Edwardian splendor, an expansive space with a checkerboard marble floor, gilded columns, polished wood and damask upholstery. There, guests read quietly beside a fire or linger beneath a magnificent Beaux-Arts frieze entitled “An Idyll of a Golden Age.” But the heart of the hotel is still the Thames Foyer, where a dramatic stained-glass cupola admits a flood of natural light even on the grayest of London days. On the evening of our arrival, we enjoyed a delicious late supper of Cornish crab and Scottish smoked salmon, accompanied by a glass of crisp Petit Chablis. Although it is open for such light meals throughout the day, the Thames Foyer is most animated at teatime, and such is the demand for tables that a waiting list for non-residents is said to extend for several weeks.

To one side of the Thames Foyer, the opulent new Beaufort Bar offers an impressive selection of Louis Roederer champagnes by the glass. And its voluptuous black-and-gold interior is the scene of a nightly cabaret, the continuation of The Savoy’s long musical tradition. At the Foyer’s farthest extent, the River Restaurant, once the domain of Escoffier, now sports a striking art deco design, augmented by a leopard-print carpet, ivory leather chairs and flamboyant displays of orchids and calla lilies. There, chef Ryan Murphy offers a menu of Modern French cuisine.

However, the most celebrated of the hotel’s dining venues is the Savoy Grill, which in its previous incarnation was one of London’s preeminent power lunch venues. This was partly due to its location, close to The City financial district and Fleet Street (where virtually all of the capital’s newspapers were once printed), as well as to Covent Garden and the West End.

We chose to eat in the Grill one Saturday lunchtime. The appearance of the room is substantially the same, with lustrous wood paneling, art deco lighting, starched white tablecloths and black leather chairs. Decoration is confined to large black-and-white photographs of celebrity diners from the 1950s, including Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe.

If you prefer hotels that are discreet and understated, The Savoy is emphatically not for you.

The menu is now under the supervision of Stuart Gillies, an associate of Gordon Ramsay, and it, too, has a nostalgic feel. We opted for stuffed lamb served from a silver trolley, which was enjoyable but poorly carved and untidily presented. Overall, the biggest change in the Grill is its atmosphere, which at times is boisterous rather than merely animated. Clearly, it is the fashionable place to eat in London right now, and at the risk of sounding insufferably snobbish, on the day we ate there some of the diners didn’t quite measure up to the grandeur of the place and its history.

In general, the new incarnation of The Savoy is extremely impressive, but our favorable assessment comes with one or two important caveats. If you prefer hotels that are discreet and understated, The Savoy is emphatically not for you. Ever since it opened, this has been an establishment that has celebrated exuberance, display and the English love of all things theatrical. My greatest fear, however, is that The Savoy is in imminent danger of becoming a tourist attraction. Many other grand hotels are obliged to confront this hazard — The Peninsula in Hong Kong and the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok immediately spring to mind — and The Savoy’s management will have to be increasingly vigilant. Successful hotels must be run primarily for the benefit of their residents, not those paying $50 for afternoon tea.

THE SAVOY 93 Savoy Deluxe King, $870; River Deluxe King, $1,295; Riverview Junior Suite King, $1,620. Strand. Tel. (44) 20-7836-4343.

The Connaught

In the days of the ancien régime, the most exclusive of London hotels was The Connaught, a clublike establishment ideally located in the so-called Mayfair Village. For a certain type of committed American Anglophile, the place was an antechamber to heaven. True, many of the rooms were on the small side and the baths old-fashioned, but the country house atmosphere, punctilious staff and two superb restaurants provided more than adequate compensation. The Grill Room, in particular, had a kind of aura. Its menu was defiantly traditional—oyster pie, roast grouse, bread-and-butter pudding—but it was under the supervision of French chef Michel Bourdin and had boasted a Michelin star for as long as anyone could remember.

In 2005, The Connaught was sold and the new owners decided to invest more than $110 million in a comprehensive transformation. The work has been undertaken in phases but it is now virtually complete. The most significant part of the redesign has been the addition of 31 new rooms and suites in an extension to the original hotel, bringing the total to 121.

The taxi that brought us from The Savoy to The Connaught drove down Mount Street, an elegant thoroughfare that clearly illustrates the changing face of London. The old-established galleries and shops—Purdey, the leading manufacturer of classic English shotguns, is located at the corner of Mount Street and South Audley Street—have now been joined by high-fashion retailers Marc Jacobs and Balenciaga, while outside Scott’s seafood restaurant, a venerable establishment that has recently been transformed into one of London’s chief celebrity magnets, a scrum of paparazzi lay in wait for some unfortunate victim.

At The Connaught, much had changed, but much seemed reassuringly familiar.

At The Connaught, much had changed, but much seemed reassuringly familiar. To the right of the lobby, the former drawing room is now the trendy Coburg Bar, but the most obvious addition is Espelette, a brand-new casual dining restaurant housed within a kind of glass conservatory overlooking Mount Street. Rather than taking the elevator to our room on the second floor, we opted to walk up the hotel’s magnificent mahogany staircase, which has been spectacularly restored and now gleams and glints with polish and newly applied gold leaf.

The reinvention of The Connaught was entrusted to the well-known English interior designer, Guy Oliver, who has brought a sophisticated color palette as well as a full range of contemporary technology to the original rooms. Beds come with Italian linens and cashmere blankets, while thickly lined damask curtains ensure tranquility. The biggest change is to be found in the baths, which have been comprehensively modernized and are now faced in white Thassos marble.

In common with those in many old hotels, the accommodations at The Connaught tend to vary greatly in size and shape, so it is virtually impossible to generalize. Despite its modernization, the property still has rooms that are small and somewhat inconvenient. On one recent visit, we found that we had been allocated a long, thin room with a similarly elongated bath. It took us approximately 20 seconds to decide to upgrade to a second-floor suite.

Rooms in the new wing are dissimilar to those in the old hotel, and the intention appears to have been to create an environment suitable for those traveling alone or on business. The bedrooms have relatively low ceilings, but the baths are extremely spacious and peerlessly appointed. However, for leisure travelers, the atmospheric original building is to be preferred.

Finding any land on which to build in the heart of Mayfair was little short of miraculous.

Aside from the new accommodations, the principal addition to The Connaught is the Aman Spa, which offers treatment rooms that come with private dressing areas. A small gymnasium is complemented by an indoor heated swimming pool. Although the spa is a pleasing addition to the hotel, its design has been constrained by a lack of space. Finding any land on which to build in the heart of Mayfair was little short of miraculous.

It is the hotel’s stated intention to reopen the Grill Room, but no definite date seems to have been set, and perhaps it will require a significant economic upturn to make the investment worthwhile. In the meanwhile, guests must content themselves with brasserie-style dining at Espelette, or haute cuisine at Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, which has recently been awarded its second Michelin star. Chef Darroze is originally from Landes in southwestern France, and her menu features regional and seasonal dishes.

The renovation has unquestionably been a labor of love, and the hotel is now a remarkable blend of innovation and tradition.

The Connaught offers several rooms for private dining, including the exquisitely restored Georgian Room, which is the most beautiful venue for a dinner party of up to 12 people that can be imagined. The raised floral garlands on the pale pistachio walls have been lavishly re-silvered, and the effect by candlelight is breathtaking. An obliging concierge showed me around, and I made a mental note to make a reservation for my next significant wedding anniversary.

For those who vividly remember The Connaught of old, its new incarnation can take a bit of getting used to. But the renovation has unquestionably been a labor of love, and the hotel is now a remarkable blend of innovation and tradition.

THE CONNAUGHT 96 Superior King, $945; Deluxe King, $1,010; Deluxe Junior Suite, $1,470. Carlos Place, Mayfair. Tel. (44) 20-7499-7070.

Illustrations © Melissa Colson

Maps © Andrew Harper