WHEN the Hilton on Park Lane first opened to the public in 1963, it perfectly suited the Swinging Sixties zeitgeist. It occasioned an important influence on the Beatles – they listened here for the first time to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – and as the first Hilton in the UK, it heralded the arrival of American-style panache to a city desperate for glamour and glitz.
Skyscraper hotels were new to a country when the building, designed by William B Tabler, a famous architect of Hilton hotels in New York, San Francisco and other cities, became Park Lane’s most visible and distinguished structure.
The pleasingly informal and attractive lobby of London Hilton on Park Lane
Many decades later, when I experienced the hotel, its lustre had faded, and the place was feeling dated and a little frowsty. Now, after a major refurbishment, the pizazz has returned with aplomb and is instantly felt upon stepping into the open-plan and pleasantly informal lobby.
Despite handling 453 guest rooms and suites, checking in at reception was flawless; the four lifts are operated from the outside, and I was soon whisked me up to the 16th floor and a Park Lane Executive suite. Before doing so, I looked back at the refashioned lobby and realised that it is the art installation that steals the show: countless aluminium leaves, anodised and arranged to create a sense of motion and light.
The sophisticated and intimate Revery Bar
On the 16th floor, muted colours in the carpeted corridor and the reassuring calmness of solid oak doors prepare one for the suite’s tone of understated luxury – nothing funky or frilly – which, for me, emerges as a signature tune of the hotel. The suite became a living space and not just a place with a king-size bed to sleep in at night: its door opening into a roomy lounge area with comfy sofa-seating, amenities unobtrusively positioned to one side and, on a table, a surprise bottle of sparkling rosé and a tempting chocolate and caramel cake.
What steals the show, though, is a view through the floor-to-ceiling window that enhances the sense of space already intuited by the spacious interior. The vista through the glass was Hyde Park’s broccoli-like but natural canopy (with the Serpentine justdiscernible), serenely undisturbed by the perpetual but silent procession of vehicles visible down below on Park Lane.
A bewildering presence at first, because it looks like the London Eye, which, geography demands, should not be visible from here, was the giant Ferris wheel that is part of Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland. Another, less interesting view is available from the window and its cushioned sill in the bedroom: looking northwards and taking in the Post Office Tower, the urban landscape is mostly one of monotone rooftops of buildings. The size of the bathroom is pleasingly proportionate to the suite’s generous scale and comes with a proper bath and a shower, which, like the wardrobe, is a walk-in affair.
A corner table in Park Corner Brasserie
Staying in a suite gives access to the Executive Lounge, open from 7am for breakfast and not closing until 10pm. An evening period of two hours is a pleasant time for enjoying complimentary drinks and food in comfortable seating and another grand view of Park Lane, this time from the Hilton’s first floor. The restaurant, Park Corner Brasserie, is at ground level and more easily found than the nearby Revery Bar, which is worth seeking out for expertly-concocted cocktails and other libations.
Park Corner Brasserie has an incredibly good-value set meal which ends at 5pm, but my calorie-counting companion asked for one of its starters, grilled cauliflower, which was found to be deliciously warm and spicy. I was equally pleased with the celeriac carpaccio from the à la carte menu and, with fifteen main dishes to choose from, one is spoilt for choice, and the restaurant has a nice laid-back vibe that brings jouissance to the occasion.
by Sean Sheehan
For booking and more information on the range of rooms and suites, see London Hilton on Park Lane