David Rockwell’s studio worked on the original structure, now part of Carmen Cordón and Ignacio Jiménez’s Hidden Away Hotels – five properties and expansion goals
Calle de Lobo – Calle de Echegaray, Madrid
Since at least 1846, there had been a leather workshop in Madrid, on Calle de Echegaray (Calle de Lobo until 1888). German artisan Enrique Loewe Roessberg joined it as a partner in 1872. Despite the slow growth of the business, a new workshop and store was opened in 1892 on the parallel Calle del Príncipe. In 1905 King Alfonso XIII granted the family business the title of Supplier to the Royal Household, and just five years later Loewe opened its first store in Barcelona.
This and many other stories have enlivened this street in Madrid’s historic arts district Barrio de las Letras, one of the first to be lit up with gas in the mid-nineteenth century. At number 8 of calle de Echegaray, opened its doors for the first time in 1886 – Gran Hotel Inglés, the oldest hotel in Madrid and the first to have its own restaurant. A hub for artists, actors and historical figures, yesterday as today.
Madrid, The Barrio de las Letras neighborhood
The Barrio de las Letras – also known as the Literary and Muses Quarter – is an area of the Cortes district, in the center of the Spanish capital. It owes its name to the literary activity developed during the 16th and 17th centuries. In this area resided some of the most important literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age, such as Miguel de Cervantes, Quevedo, Góngora (who lived in the same house as his literary antagonist, Quevedo), or Lope de Vega and his idolized Marta de Nevares. Here, with these protagonists and in this environment, the first corrales de comedias (theatrical courtyard) in Madrid were born. An impoverished Cervantes, who had previously lived in at least three other houses in the same neighborhood, lived and died in rented accommodation on the corner of Calle del Mentidero and Calle de Francos.
Although most of the remaining buildings were built between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Casa de Lope de Vega, where the writer lived between 1610 and 1635 (today the house-museum is a tourist attraction), the convent of San Ildefonso de las Trinitarias Descalzas, where Cervantes was buried, and the church of San Sebastián. At number 87 Calle de Atocha, one of the streets bordering the neighborhood, was the printing house of Juan de la Cuesta, where the first edition of the first part of Don Quixote de la Mancha was printed (in 1604).
Don Agustín Ibarra
The owner of the nearby Café Inglés, Don Agustín Ibarra, bought the structure under construction with the goal of turning it into a hotel. On the ground floor, he intended to build a restaurant as good or better than those found abroad. That story leads up to today: restaurant Casa Lobo has recalled to its kitchen the one Michelin star chef, Fernando Arellan and offers a range of sharing platters and tapas style dishes that experiment contemporary Spanish cuisine.
Carmen Cordón and Ignacio Jiménez: Hidden Away Hotels
The gran Hotel Inglés has experienced a new splendor thanks to the couple of hoteliers Carmen Cordón and Ignacio Jiménez. After a stint working at a resort in Santo Domingo, the couple started a. hotel group that today has five establishments – Hidden Away Hotels – with the aim of expanding. The declaration of intent of the hotelier couple is, from the beginning, to find structures with a history to be restored and brought back into vogue.
David Rockwell: the design project at Gran Hotel Inglés
The newspaper La Epoca, already in 1886, praised the excellence of a unique hotel in Madrid for having a lift, bathroom on each floor, lighting, steam heating and all of the advances that make life more comfortable. Today, David Rockwell’s studio has worked on the original structure, dusting off its preciousness, and juxtaposing unique antiques with contemporary design. The hall still has the original columns. The living room develops all around, with seats, low tables, sofas and armchairs. At the back of the room, in the center, the cocktail bar surrounded by a beam of light, and the tables of the internal restaurant LoBbyto. Behind, a library houses more than 600 titles.
Artists at Gran Hotel Inglés
The number of rooms has been reduced from 56 to 48 in this boutique hotel which throughout history has housed illustrious personalities of the cultural and political life of the time, such as the writers Ramón del Valle-inclán, the singer and composer Carlos Gardel and politician José Canalejas. The bullfighter Antonio Fuentes, on bullfighting days and already dressed for the bullfight, used to drink a few glasses of cognac in the hotel bar before leaving to go to the bullring.
Virginia Woolf in Spain
Spain is, by far, the most splendid country I have seen in my life, stated Virginia Woolf. She also stayed at the Gran Hotel Inglés. Woolf wrote about ‘the hopelessly blue skies’ of Madrid and the alienating heat of the Meseta, but also the smells and colors of Granada, the inns in Extremadura, the network of railway networks in Badajoz. In total, Woolf traveled to Spain on three occasions: the first was in 1905, when he was only 23 years old, in the company of his brother Adrian, after a serious depression due to the death of his father; in 1912 she returned to Spain on her honeymoon with Leonard Woolf, her husband, on a trip in which they also stopped in Italy; and they returned for the last time in 1923, to the Alpujarras, to visit their friend Gerald Brenan.
Calle de Echegaray, Madrid
Calle de Echegaray lost its Renaissance name of Calle de Lobo to the politician and engineer, and winner of the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature, José Echegaray.
