What if a building could call out to you?

Not with a whisper, or with a siren song promising to end all your troubles.

A song that only the lost, the broken, and the dangerously curious can hear.

Follow me down the rabbit hole.

I'm your host, Danny, and today we are talking about the Cecil Hotel. Thank you, Emily and Lindsay for your request. But before we get started, of course, I love to thank our sponsors. So thank you, Wise Wolf Gold for sponsoring my podcast. Guys, if you want gold and silver delivered straight to your front door for as little as $50 a month, go to rabbit hole. Dot gold right now. It comes straight to your front door.

Super easy, super convenient. Precious metals are really in right now. If you're curious about what's in,

go buy some. The Cecil Hotel was built in 1924 by three hoteliers, William Banks-Hanner,

Charles L. Dix, and Robert H. Shops at the cost of over

$1 million. That's about $21 million today. It's located in downtown Los Angeles and

officially opened its doors on December 20, 1924. The hotel was initially built as a destination for business travelers and tourists. The building was

designed by architect Loy Lester Smith, who also designed the historic city club building, now known

as the Primrose Design Building. The building is 14 stories tall with 700 rooms, and at the time of its opening, it claimed to be absolutely fireproof.

The lavishly fashionable Travelers Hotel began its decline just five years after opening when the Great Depression hit the United States.

It saw a spike again throughout the 1940s before a steady decline in the decades

following with the nearby area of Skid Row becoming increasingly dangerous and a place

for transient people to hang out and live on the streets. In 1987, the band U2 featured the Cecil Hotel in their music video where the streets have no names.

In 2008, new owners took over and refurbished a portion of the hotel,

and by 2011, the Cecil Hotel was rebranded Stay on Main Street,

separating a residential portion from a hotel portion.

Although the reception areas were separate during the day, the building shared facilities

between tenants and guests and the building's official website remained the Cecilhotel.com.

In 2014, Richard Bourne, a hotelier from New York, bought the hotel for about $30 million,

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