A 1931 church in Silver Lake has just transformed into a 25-room boutique hotel, and Casetta is calling it Hotel Lucile. The building spent its first century as Bethany Presbyterian Church, then an early home to East West Players, one of the nation's first Asian American theater companies, then a neighborhood antique market, and now opens with its stained glass, soaring arches, and original cross intact around a restaurant, a rooftop pool, and a living art gallery.
Venice Beach studio Electric Bowery, led by Lucia Bartholomew and Cayley Lambur, kept the building's bones as the design's real subject. The former chapel still reads as a chapel, its restored stained glass and soaring ceilings framing a central bar beneath oversized arches, with 25-foot curtains that let the room contract for an intimate dinner or open up for something larger.
Two hand-painted murals by Erin Lynn Welsh crown the space, one looking toward Altadena and the San Gabriel Mountains, the other drawn from Elysian Park's native plantings, and the original stage now doubles as a private dining room, framed by three works from Thai Mainhard, Harlan Hue and Thomas Linder. The 25 guest rooms range from Petit and Signature Kings up to a 536-square-foot Lucile Suite, built around a sun-drenched interior courtyard with original wood floors, steel-framed windows and Aesop bath amenities in bathrooms lit by their own stained glass.
At the center of the building is Sous Sous, a restaurant set beneath the former chapel's ceiling that pairs the South of France with the American South, Marseille and Nice running into Charleston and New Orleans. Executive Chef Patrick Costa builds the menu around seasonal seafood and market produce, oysters finished with Espelette pepper, hamachi crudo with Virginia peanuts and chile, a brick chicken with Mary's Organic chicken and frisée, and a bouillabaisse for two built on clams, mussels, shrimp and a saffron broth.
Behind the bar, Operations and Beverage Director Lee Zaremba pulls from New Orleans cocktail culture, including an absinthe-rinsed Sazerac finished with toasted coconut. "Hotel Lucile reflects the approach we take across Casetta," said General Manager Anthony Gutierrez. "Every project begins with a respect for the history of a place and the community that surrounds it."
Developed with Rhett Baruch Gallery and Uprise Art, the hotel's rotating collection includes stained-glass coasters by Janel Foo referencing the building's original windows, and individual ceramics by Tish Cyrus Purcell's new brand, Tish, placed in every room. Partnerships thread through the rest of the stay, an Erewhon-curated minibar, a library built with Skylight Books, and neighborhood runs through Usal Project, alongside a nightly martini cart that makes its way through the property.
Hotel Lucile is Casetta's newest addition to a portfolio that already runs from Hotel Marina Riviera in Big Bear Lake and Hotel Willa in Taos to The Pearl Hotel in San Diego, Casa Cody in Palm Springs and The Surfrider in Malibu, each one built around the same instinct: take a building with a real history and let that history keep making the case for the place. Hotel Lucile began welcoming guests September 14.