Description
Designed by architect Peter Dominick of 4240 Architecture Inc. (formerly part of Urban Design Group Inc.), it is based on the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 1900s. Despite the large scale of the hotel (1,019 rooms), the architecture still captures the key elements of the Craftsman style: wide sweeping roofs, projecting beams, exaggerated braces and colors that blend with nature. The exterior evokes the feel of National Park Service lodges of the Western United States, particularly the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park and, to a lesser degree, the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. The interior design of the hotel also features the Craftsman motif, albeit on a larger scale.
Craftsman homes often have a garden theme. For the Grand Californian, the theme was taken from a garden idea and scaled up so that the garden became a forest. The reception hall is based on the interior of the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco, increased in scale to accommodate the large reception desk. The central lobby is a living room done in immense scale with a massive fireplace and vast arching beams overhead, and furnished with chairs and sofas arranged around small coffee tables.
Many of the items found throughout the hotel have been handcrafted by modern practitioners of the Arts and Crafts movement using traditional techniques. Some early Roycroft items are on display in the lobby.
Some of the hotel's rooms and features are tributes to various Craftsman-era architects and designers. For instance, two of the guest suites, as well as the California Boardroom, pay homage to Frank Lloyd Wright; the Napa Rose restaurant features a rose motif in the glass design which was inspired by Charles Rennie MacKintosh. The Storytellers Cafe features a large tile mural that is a reproduction of an original design by the Gladding, McBean Company for a Robin Hood Room in the Wilmington, California, public library.
Its name is based on Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, its sister resort and Walt Disney World's flagship resort hotel. The two hotels do not share themes, though, as the Grand Californian is a Craftsman theme, while the Grand Floridian is of a Victorian theme but both are Disney's two finest resort properties in the world. It does, however, share many thematic elements with Disney's Wilderness Lodge (also designed by Dominick) with its national park lodge themeing at Walt Disney World.
Read more about this topic: Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
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