Since its construction in 1924, downtown Los Angeles rooming house, the Cecil Hotel was a hot topic: first, as an opulent getaway with an iconic lobby, and later as the site of a score of deaths and the home of at least two serial killers. And now the 15-story building, which was fictionally replicated in the fifth season of FX series American Horror Story, can be yours—at least, for the next 91 years.
If you’ve watched the 2021 Netflix docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, you likely know the troubled history of the building at 640 S. Main St. Intended as luxury lodging, the Beaux Arts business fell on troubled times as the downtown area of LA began to lose its luster in the 1960s. High-profile homicides, as well as on-site deaths by misadventure or suicide, didn’t help its reputation.
By the 1980s, its long-term residents included Richard Ramirez, known better as the Night Stalker killer; his time there was also commemorated in a Netflix docuseries, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger also lived there in the early 1990s, allegedly committing at least three homicides during his stay at the hotel.
It was the disappearance of Elisa Lam in 2013 that took the Cecil from a locally notorious spot to a source of national fear. Lam, a Canadian tourist traveling alone, was caught on a surveillance camera inside one of the hotel’s elevators demonstrating bizarre, fearful behavior. The video was dissected, frame-by-frame, by internet sleuths after her body was discovered in one of the hotel’s rooftop water tanks. Her death was ruled an accident by local officials, who cited her mental health as a factor.
A few years later, we saw a similar scene set in the fictional Hotel Cortez of American Horror Story: Hotel, Ryan Murphy’s long-running FX series on the supernatural and unexplained. “I was always very obsessed with the Hotel Cecil,” Murphy told Collider in 2015 when asked about the real-life influence on that season. “That place has had its share of bad publicity over the years, but that was one” inspiration, he said.
In the years since Lam’s death, the Cecil has attempted to shake some of that reputation, and was even named a historic cultural monument in 2017. In 2019, the city of Los Angeles spent $45 million to convert the hotel into housing for people who had been experiencing homelessness. The site is currently owned by New York hotelier Richard Born’s company, 248 Haynes Hotel Associates, the Real Deal reports. Now that company has placed the building’s 91-year ground lease on the market for an undisclosed sum, which would, per the LA Times, allow “its long-term use and development.”
Despite the high-ticket renovation, the LAT reports that the building remains significantly vacant. Only 60 percent of its 600 units are filled, with tenants complaining about infestations, unsanitary conditions, and violence.
The Rev. Dylan Littlefield, who serves as the chaplain for the building, says he hopes the building’s next caretaker can finally turn it around. “I’m hoping the new owners, they invest the type of energy and resources to be able to fully utilize the building for individuals that we serve,” he told the LAT. “My hope would be that whoever does buy the lease is able to do a better job at community building, at being proactive in the life of the building.”
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