
In March, as CultureMap reported, Houston’s most cherished boutique resort unveiled a groundbreaking, $10-million renovation. As the estate’s Dan Zimmerman mentioned of La Colombe d’Or’s pristine update: “We touched every little thing — but we also touched very little.”

But now, the 1923 Beaux-Arts Montrose mansion is getting heralded not for new touches, but rather for its old attraction in a prestigious listing. La Colombe d’Or has just landed on Smithsonian Journal’s roundup of America’s five “most invincible” accommodations.

“It’s really worth remembering that America’s most famed accommodations have survived crises other than COVID-19,” notes the list’s author, Tony Perrottet. “The hospitality market has had to adapt to wars, economic spirals, radical style changes—and certainly, other, even far more devastating epidemics—each of which pressured somersaults that give new which means to the modern buzzword ‘pivot.’”

Certainly, La Colombe d’Or’s proprietor and founder, the gregarious and effortlessly charming Steve Zimmerman, attracts significant praise for adapting to Houston’s mercurial financial state and challenges.

In the course of the disaster that was the 1980s oil crash, Zimmerman cooked up a clever notion: The lodge would operate an “Oil Barrel Exclusive,” and Zimmerman set a real barrel of oil in the lobby with a personal computer on major in which guests could test the day’s price, the tale notes. “It acquired down to $9.08,” tells Smithsonian Journal. “I was getting rid of my fanny at lunch time! But it was truly worth it.”

Zimmerman, in no way one particular to drop out on a community relations and advertising prospect, soon located himself in newspaper tales from New York to Tokyo and Berlin.

The crash story was a increase an early admirer was Tv information legend Walter Cronkite, who was charmed by the small lodge and its quirky background, for every the story.

Clean off the Oil Barrel exclusive buzz, La Colombe d’Or speedily turned Houston’s boutique end for browsing stars, from Peter Jennings to Bishop Tutu and Madonna, all charmed by the additional than 400 artworks, high-quality sculptures in the back garden, assorted “Gallic bric a brac” — and potentially most, by the chatty Zimmerman himself.

Other iconic inns joining La Colombe d’Or on Smithsonian’s coveted record are San Francisco’ Fairmont Lodge, New York’s Mohonk Mountain Residence, Miami’s Biltmore, and the Roosevelt Lodge in Los Angeles.

“We’re pretty humbled to be provided in Smithsonian Magazine’s Five of America’s Most invincible Hotels with other iconic countrywide lodges together with Roosevelt Resort and The Biltmore,” Zimmerman tells CultureMap.

“The 100-calendar year record of the mansion at La Colombe d’Or, at first owned by Walter Fondren Jr. of Humble Oil, has fared numerous crisis such as the crash of oil, various hurricanes and floods and a world pandemic and will keep on to be an iconic resort and landmark for the metropolis of Houston for a lot of years to appear.”
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