HOME IS WHERE THE HOTEL IS

There are some properties that call us back throughout our lives. While they may renovate or change hands, a sense of familiarity remains. SARAH BRUNING reflects on the evolution of a childhood refuge.

- SARAH BRUNING

IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS since my last visit, but I can still trace the hallways of The Langham Huntington, Pasadena, in my mind as easily as I can navigate my own home. My first trip to the hotel was in the late 1980s when I was five years old and the hotel was a Ritz-Carlton. My mother dressed me and my younger brother in matching smocked outfits, and we made the 10-minute drive from our home for the children’s Christmas tea. The Lobby Lounge had morphed into a festive wonderland, with faux snow that felt particularly transportive given LA’s balmy Decembers. As we waited for Santa, we sat at a table sipping Earl Grey from porcelain cups and eating dainty egg sandwiches. It all felt incredibly grown-up—a far cry from serving imaginary tea to my Barbies from a plastic Fisher-Price set.

The Langham has been a fixture in my hometown since the 1920s, when it was a winter-only resort. Fashionable guests and business moguls flocked there to escape the frigid East Coast and mingle with the Hollywood crowd. (Jean Harlow would stop by to play badminton in the 30s.) As decades passed, it remained a social hub and became an iconic filming location for movies and TV shows as varied as Knots Landing, Saving Mr. Banks, and Lindsay Lohan’s Parent Trap remake. It was, in many ways, Pasadena’s answer to Claridge’s or the Plaza.