Jill Murray
I hate everything. It’s true. While everything might be really interesting, everything is also too commercial or not commercial enough, or it’s banal or pretentious or just… what’s the word… beige.
So it was with a relative amount of skepticism that I ventured all the way across the street to check out the grand, re-opening Public Open House of the refurbished Gladstone Hotel.
What can I say? Hotel open, Hate Factory closed. Wow! That thing is fantastic. The second floor is going to remain artist studios and offices. For the open house they turned rooms on that floor into a museum of really freaking interesting artifacts from the building’s history. Then on the upper floors, they’ve had each real, working, reservable hotel room decorated by a different artist.
It turned out really cool. There’s a room in there to suit just about anyone’s taste, while expanding on the conventional definition of what a hotel room should feel like. The cafe off the ballroom is now serving vegan chocolate cake and espresso! And truly, the building is now worth visiting just to ride in the really, truly turn-of-the-century elevator. Everyone walking around the open house seemed really fascinated and curious and enchanted. The whole thing just begs for a coffee table book re-cap.
I don’t think they’re 100% complete with the restoration– just complete enough to start using the rooms. This is one of the things I’ve liked about the project from the beginning. The functioning parts of the building, namely the three bars at ground floor have kept right on functioning all the way through the construction. The colourful regulars who work there are still working there. (Two, in fact, even show up in the wallpaper and on throw pillows in one of the rooms.) It does not suck.
It does not suck!
The Gladstone Hotel has put me in my place. I never would have suspected such a thing would even be possible in Toronto. I stand corrected.
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