Seelbach Hotel

Louis Seelbach and his brother Otto emigrated from Frankenthal, Germany, a small, rural town in Bavaria. Louis Seelbach arrived in Louisville in 1869 at age 17, shortly after reaching the United States. He worked in the first Galt House Hotel for a time. He turned 22 in 1874 and opened the Seelbach Bar & Grill that year, which he quickly built into a flourishing enterprise. The restaurant's success and Louisville's quickly expanding population and economy allowed Louis Seelbach to bring his brother Otto from Germany to help open the first Seelbach Hotel in 1891 above the bar & grill at 6th and Main.[6]

The Seelbach Hotel, 1910

The brothers were intent on building Louisville's first grand hotel: a hotel reflecting the opulence and old-world grandeur of European hotels in cities like Vienna and Paris. They formed the Seelbach Hotel Co[7] and purchased a piece of property at the corner of 4th and Walnut (now Muhammad Ali Blvd) Streets. They broke ground in December 1903 and The Seelbach Hotel opened its doors on May 1, 1905, just in time for the Kentucky Derby.[8]

On the opening day, over 25,000 people visited the hotel. The Seelbach hosted a gala that evening, with dinner parties in each of the 150 rooms.[9] The structure incorporated marble from Italy, Germany and France, along with wood from the West Indies and Europe.[10]

The hotel attracted large numbers of patrons in its first two years, and, luckily, the Seelbach Realty Company—formed in 1902 before the property purchase—had been planning from opening day to expand the hotel. On January 1, 1907, the second phase opened, raising the number of rooms to 500. The lower two floors of the ten-story structure were faced with stone, while the upper floors were brick. Work included enclosing the rooftop garden to allow it to be used as a winter garden.[11] The Seelbach regularly hosted guests of the Kentucky Derby.

In 1925, Louis Seelbach, president of the Seelbach Hotel Co., died. On April 1, 1926, Chicago-based businessman Abraham M. Liebling bought the hotel for approximately $2.5 million.[12] In 1929, he sold the hotel to the Eppley Hotel Company for $2 million.[13] Mr. Eppley, of Omaha, Nebraska, owned many hotels throughout the Midwest. He sold The Seelbach, along with his other properties, to Sheraton Hotels in 1956, as part of a $30 million deal. This made the Seelbach part of the second largest hotel sale in US history at the time.[14] The hotel became the Sheraton-Seelbach Hotel, but its name was soon shortened to just the Sheraton Hotel. Sheraton sold the hotel, along with seventeen other aging properties, to Gotham Hotels in 1968 and it regained its original name.[15] Following a severe national economic slump, the hotel closed in July 1975, after the owners went bankrupt.[16]

In 1978, Louisville native and Hollywood television actor, Roger Davis, bought the Seelbach. Restoration work began in early 1979 and a grand re-opening was held on April 12, 1982.[17] National Hotels Corporation, a subsidiary of Radisson Hotels and DoubleTree Hotels managed the hotel.[18]

The Seelbach was sold to Medallion Hotels in 1990.[19] In 1998, Cap Star Hotels (later MeriStar Hospitality Corp)[20] bought the hotel from Medallion,[21] along with five other properties, for $150 million,[22] and it became The Seelbach Hilton.[23]

The Blackstone Group purchased MeriStar's 57 hotels in 2006 for $2.6 billion.[22] Blackstone sold the Seelbach in 2007 to a joint venture, with Interstate Hotels & Resorts holding 15 percent and Investcorp holding 85 percent.[24] In 2009, the hotel was renovated, at a cost of $12 million.[25] In 2017, the hotel was sold to Columbus-based Rockbridge Capital.[26]

Many US Presidents have chosen to spend time at the hotel while in Louisville, including William Howard Taft (1911), Woodrow Wilson (1916), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1938), Harry Truman (1948), John F. Kennedy (1962), Lyndon B. Johnson (1964), Jimmy Carter (1970s), Bill Clinton (1998), and George W. Bush (2002).[28]

Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, and Al Capone—who was a frequent guest of the Seelbach—stayed at the hotel, often for clandestine poker games. One story from the 1920s involves Al Capone sneaking out through a series of secret stairways and tunnels when Louisville Police broke up one of these games.[29] Hotel staff are frequently eager to show the Al Capone room (if it is unoccupied) and give its history.

The Rolling Stones, Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, Billy Joel, Robin Williams, Russell Crowe, Julia Child, Wolfgang Puck, and Shorty Rossi, Donnie Wahlberg, reality TV personality of Pit Boss are among those celebrities who have stayed at the Seelbach.[30]

F. Scott Fitzgerald frequented the hotel in April 1918, while training for his deployment in World War I. One night after expensive bourbon and cigars however, he had to be restrained and was ejected from the hotel.[31] This experience seemingly did not tarnish his memories however, as he later included a fictional hotel akin to the Seelbach as the setting for the wedding of Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.[32] In this story it is referenced that Tom "Rented out an entire floor of the Mulbach hotel" which could either refer to the Grand Ballroom (once located on the roof of the hotel) or the Rathskeller room (located in the basement) where Fitzgerald often went to the bar.[33]