Hotel Le Negresco: A 21st Century Renaissance Transformed after WWI and overtaken by American troops during WWII, the Hotel Le Negresco in Nice is once welcoming visitors. She is as seductive and playful as a cabaret, yet as refined as a symphony. It is those disparate qualities, and a joie de vivre synonymous with the French, that keep the iconic Le Negresco hotel in Nice still young—even as it celebrates its centennial. The palace takes its cue from the top, literally. It exudes the spirited persona of its 90-year-old proprietor, Madame Jeanne Augier, who resides on the top floor with her two dogs. (Carmen, her cat, prefers to lounge in the bar.) She still runs the landmark hotel her father purchased in 1957, and she attributes its staying power to two things: the hotel’s reflection of generations of French art and its role as a global ambassador. “From the beginning, when I took over the hotel,” Augier says, “my primary goal was to receive honorably the foreigners who come to visit my country.” She has welcomed the famous from around the world. The hotel’s “gold book” includes such notable guests as Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Elton John, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace of Monaco, Michael Jackson, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, John Travolta, Kirk Douglas, Queen Elizabeth II, Clint Eastwood, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Henri Matisse, French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, and leaders and royals from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Salvador Dalí, a friend of Augier’s, was a frequent guest. “Whenever he arrived, he was only happy if he was the center of attention,” Augier recently recalled. “If there was an event going on when he arrived, with many guests who paid more attention to the event than to him, he was extremely unhappy.” Distinguished guests continue to check in today, just as they did when the doors of the Negresco opened on Jan. 8, 1913, two years after Romanian Henry Negresco (born Henri Negrescu) decided to build the palace of his dreams on the Promenade des Anglais facing the sparkling Mediterranean. He imagined the Negresco as a sanctuary along the Riviera for the well-to-do to escape winter’s chill. The project was financed by auto kingpin Alexandre Darracq and designed by celebrated architect Édouard-Jean Niermans. An alluring white façade, pink cupola and glass roof in the Royal Salon helped make the Negresco unique, even by French standards. The hotel debuted with such innovations as a steam autoclave for sterilizing crockery, a pneumatic-tube system to distribute mail to the guestrooms, and telephones in most guest rooms. Soon came the Vanderbilts, Portugal’s Queen Amélie, the Russian Grand Dukes Vladimir and Dimitri, and other glitterati, who immediately put the Negresco at the forefront of luxury hotels. The first year’s profits were a whopping 800,000 gold francs. Yet success did not last. After World War I began in 1914, Henry Negresco turned his magnificent hotel into a hospital. He died in 1920, shortly after the war ended. By then the stream of wealthy had forsaken the Negresco, and it fell into the hands of creditors. It was sold to a Belgian family, yet business remained slow and it did not realize the success it once experienced. During World War II, the Negresco was seized by American soldiers and used as a rest home. It resumed operations when the war ended, but by then vacationing on the Riviera wasn’t what it once was. Moreover, new taxes imposed on the luxury hotel industry coupled with a wildcat strike later made being an hotelier less attractive. When the Belgian family put the hotel on the market in 1957, Jean-Baptiste Mesnage thought the Negresco was just what his family needed. The pork butcher–turned–property developer desired a new home with a lift large enough to accommodate a wheelchair for his wife, Geneviève, who had been left paralyzed after a medical error, and a business where the entire family could work together as it had before the accident. Mesnage purchased the hotel on March 19, 1957, potentially saving it from becoming an apartment complex, and set about transforming the hotel’s image. The number of guest rooms was reduced—there are 96 today, down from a peak of 150, plus 21 suites—and Mesnage’s daughter Jeanne, who would later marry Paul Augier, turned her attention to the interior décor. She thought the hotel lacked soul and made it her mission to add art and refinement, two core French values that make the Negresco a showcase of the culture’s splendor. Initially, art and antiques from the 17th and 18th centuries were purchased. Over time, contemporary art was added. Today, an extravagant collection that spans five centuries and includes more than 6,000 pieces is on display. A portrait of Louis XIV, identical to that exhibited at the Louvre and Palace of Versailles, hangs in the hotel’s Versailles Lounge. In the Royal Salon, a dazzling Baccarat 16,800-crystal chandelier dangles from the pinked domed roof (itself a designated historical monument) and period paintings adorn the walls. Other highlights throughout the hotel include: a Boulle clock case with allegories of Justice and Time from the first third of the 18th century; Raymond Moretti’s portrait of Louis Armstrong (1957); a Picasso; brightly colored rugs by Moretti; and extraordinary carpets designed by Yvaral. The Negresco’s Le Chantecler, Nice’s only two–Michelin star restaurant, features sumptuous woodwork dating back to 1751, while Le Relais bar still features the genuine walnut used in 1913 and tapestries from 1683. The hotel has been featured in several films. The main elevator boasts a deep red interior and a red door with an oversized gold key as its handle. A colorful merry-go-round of wooden horses delights diners in the La Rotonde Brasserie. The new sparkly gold bathtubs with matching basins, toilets, and bidets seem like something out of a Liberace dream and add even more to some of the brightly decorated guest rooms. Each of the guest accommodations is decorated differently and furnished with antique furniture. Augier personally oversaw the hotel’s recent renovation. Just as she did in 1957, she wanted the rooms to reflect different periods in the history of France. “I have felt that being in charge of a ‘palace’ in France comes with a responsibility,” she says. “It is my duty to protect and to spread the proper image of our country throughout the world. When I decided to decorate the fourth floor of the hotel in Napoleon style, I went to French fabric makers. None of them made empire fabrics—I had to oblige them to!” Her dream for the Negresco’s next 100 years is that the hotel lives on with the same spirit of this first centennial. “Why not?” she asks.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 23:49:12 +0000
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