ELEGANT CLEVELAND / This ongoing series looks back at the finest elements of Cleveland’s stylish history, as shown in architecture, fashion and other cultural touchstones.

It has stories, maybe a few ghosts, and a whole lot of old-fashioned refinement. Cole Porter and George Gershwin visited. So did Mary Martin, Bob Hope and Jack Benny. One story has Porter writing “Night and Day” here — though a book on the composer’s lyrics says he got the idea in Morocco.

Moroccan or Moorish? Moorish, as in the Alcazar Hotel, Cleveland Heights’ bit of old Palm Beach, Fla., or silent-era Hollywood, both of which reveled in the romance of Spain.

When the Alcazar opened in 1923, a story in Cleveland Town Topics, the high-society newsletter, announced: “Picture yourself living in a castle of sun-blessed Spain . . . dreams of architectural perfection have come true; the tiles used in the floors and walls imported directly from Spain. The beautiful fireplace and the wonderful stairs are exact duplicates of those in the famous Casa del Greco in Old Spain.”

This bastion, built in the shape of an irregular pentagon, opened 85 years ago this month. It stood out — and still does.

While the boulevards of Cleveland Heights show a prevalence of architecture in the Tudor and Georgian vein, the point where Surrey and Derbyshire roads join offers a knockout building that bespeaks a flashier style.

Prohibition was stumbling through its third year, yet 1923 saw a number of fine hotels opening in Cleveland — the Wade Park Manor, the Park Lane Villa, the Commodore and the Fenwick among them. The city was riding high in what would turn out to be its wealthiest decade, even as cocktails, that staple of the high life, were served only in secret.

The 175-room Alcazar, though, was singular among the hotels, not only because it was in a suburb, but because of its flamboyant, Hollywood flair.

It still is.

For creating such a visually noteworthy building, architect Harry T. Jeffery gets a surprising lack of attention in local history books and documents. A check of Northeast Ohio historical societies and libraries shows him mentioned only for his work on the Alcazar and for being the architect of the famous Van Sweringen brothers’ home on South Park Boulevard in Shaker Heights, a stately Tudor.

In contrast, his Alcazar has the exoticism of an old Florida hotel, complete with a tiled fish pond in the hexagon-shaped lobby. Its design was based on the Hotel Ponce De Leon in St. Augustine, Fla., built for magnate Henry Flagler in the 1880s. Both hotels, it turns out, rose with Cleveland money, since Flagler made his first fortune as a partner of John D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil Co.

Some of the elements they share include the pitch of the red-tile roofs, the cloister arcade on the patio and the long windows with balcony on the fourth floor.

Cleveland architectural historian Eric Johannessen wrote of the inspiration behind the Alcazar, “the general vogue for Spanish architecture in the 1920s is related to the Florida boom of those years, especially around Palm Beach and Miami.”

Ted Sande of the Cleveland Restoration Society says the Alcazar’s style reflected a time when people were fascinated by Latin culture, as depicted in silent movies with such stars as Rudolph Valentino and Theda Bara. In Hollywood, too, a plethora of such Spanish/Moorish-style homes and hotels were built that same decade, most famously the Garden of Allah, where Valentino, Pola Negri and their friends stayed in decadent social splendor.

The Alcazar was Cleveland Heights’ version of the Garden of Allah — although the Alcazar’s courtyard had a fountain instead of a California swimming pool.

“There was, at the time, this interest in romantic Mission architecture, with a Spanish revival, and the Alcazar represented that,” Sande says. “And, of course, after it was built, a number of the stars of the day stayed there.”

The grand hotel of its day

The Alcazar drew all kinds of notables, local as well as those from out of town.

The apartment-hotel was a popular type of residence in the 1920s. Rooms and suites could be rented by the day or month, and it became a home (with built-in housekeeping) for many residents.

Cleveland’s social register, known as the Blue Book, and Cleveland Town Topics offered advertisements for it.

“Blue Chip Hotels for Your Extra Guests, Permanent Living or Salesmen,” read one oddly worded advertisement promoting the Alcazar and Commodore hotels.

The 1929 Blue Book listed 20 “social register” residents who lived at the Alcazar: Mrs. Clyde Case, the Hon. John C. Hutchins and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Carl Robbins, among others.

Single rooms with a bath were $75 a month (only $3 a night); furnished suites with hotel service were $150 a month and up. Since liquor was verboten, the hotel had to advertise its availability for “weddings, receptions, afternoon teas, cards and dancing.”

Town Topics also reported on musicales held in the Alcazar’s fifth-floor ballroom, and dancing-school recitals. (Mrs. Ford’s and later Mrs. Batzer’s dancing schools were famous in society circles.)

In spring, summer and fall, residents and guests could take in the sun while conversing in the lush garden courtyard. At its center was the fountain with a palm finial, surrounded by water-spouting frogs and turtles. The fountain, a copy of one in St. Augustine, was created by the Cleveland firm of Fischer and Jirouch, known for its sculptural work since 1902.

The Alcazar was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The application describes its interior, including the “colorful glazed tiles copied from those in the Alcazar in Seville, and other Spanish sources.” A wall, it notes, “carries a Medieval fireplace with a cartouche flanked by lion-headed dragons, a motif found in some of the Seville Spanish tiles.”

Also mentioned: the delightful shallow pool, studded with Spanish tile, that’s still in the center of the flagstone-floor lobby. Manager Sandra Martin has placed two fish in it: one is a goldfish, the other is a black Moor.

“I never even thought of the Moorish connection to the hotel,” she says.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, the Depression was under way. But those who could afford it could be well-entertained in the Alcazar’s restaurant, at one point named the Patio Dining Room, or the cocktail lounge, once called the Intimate Bar. It was private and swank enough to attract the mobsters who called Cleveland home, as well as their out-of-town visitors.

A different crowd was drawn to the rose-filled courtyard. Wedding ceremonies were held on many summer afternoons, with receptions in the ballroom. Even today, the apricot-painted room with ivory trim features the original set-in band-shell stage.

An interesting mix of residents, visitors

These days, the Alcazar is mostly an apartment building. Many residents are older, and some gave up grand homes to move in. But there are also nurses from the Philippines who live here and work at the Cleveland Clinic. When visitors from abroad stay here, they often are invited to give lectures to the other residents in the music room off the lobby.

Nancy Underhill, 75, is a visual artist who has her apartment/studio here. She first visited an artist friend who lived at the Alcazar and then decided she wanted to live in such an aesthetically interesting building as well.

“The walls are thick, so you have lots of privacy, and the ceilings are higher, and they’ve got the molding — it’s all very gracious,” she says.

She likes the closets with their old built-in vanities; you can even see what used to be hinges from a Murphy bed on hers. The suites have little shelves with doors that also open to the hallway; once, they allowed for deliveries from delicatessens and pharmacies.

Each suite still has its original double doors, too; the door closest to the hall is louvered, so opening the interior door allows breezes from the courtyard to waft through.

“These are quirky things, which I don’t mind at all,” Underhill says. “Then there’s the garden, which is like a cloister garden. So many things in this building are redolent of the times in which it was built.”

Though Ohio law dictates the Alcazar now can house only five temporary residents as a bed-and-breakfast (because it is also an apartment building), the restoration society’s Sande likes to have visitors from overseas stay here.

“They love its eccentricity,” he says.

Alcazar manager Martin loves that, too.

“You’re always surprised at the stories you hear,” she says.

Her favorite? The one about the time swimmer and actor Johnny Weissmuller stayed here with his sweetheart, actress Lupe Velez, when he was performing in the 1936 Aquacade. He and Velez liked to eat chicken; she’d prepare it in their kitchenette.

“Lupe went to the market that is now Russo’s across the street and bought two chickens,” Martin says. “The bellman — and I heard this story from his wife — was so shocked when he opened the door. Lupe had this excitable personality anyway, and then he saw these chickens running around.

“I guess Johnny liked his chicken fresh.”

And the Alcazar got itself, if not ghosts, one more piece of its legend.

The Alcazar through the years

1922-23: Plans are completed and construction begins for a distinctive five-story apartment hotel to be called the Alcazar, a Spanish word for fortress. It was built for George W. Hale, Edna Florence Steffens, Harry E. Steffens and Kent Hale Smith, who, according to a society newsletter, “personally planned and executed this Spanish castle of their dreams.” Smith’s widow, Thelma, lived at the Alcazar toward the end of her life. (She died in 2007.)

Oct. 1, 1923: The Alcazar Hotel opens to guests and tenants. It is the only hotel in Cleveland Heights.

Dec. 5, 1933: Prohibition ends after 13 years; the Alcazar, like other establishments, can now serve liquor in its restaurant and bar.

1936: The Great Lakes Exposition and Billy Rose’s Aquacade draw entertainers and visitors to the Alcazar.

1940s and 1950s: The Alcazar continues to be a favorite site for dancing, dining and listening to entertainers in the lounge and restaurant.

1963: The hotel gets a new owner, Western Reserve Residences Inc., a nonprofit organization with Christian Science roots. In line with that group’s beliefs, alcohol is no longer served or permitted in public areas.

1979: The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

March 2003: The Alcazar celebrates its 80th birthday with a Big Band and dancing.

Jan. 1, 2004: The Alcazar officially ceases being a hotel. It had to give up its hotel license because of a little-known state law that prohibits combining a hotel and apartment complex. Only five guests are permitted per night, since it is now an apartment building and a bed-and-breakfast, though longer-term corporate suites are available, too.

Oct. 1, 2008: The Alcazar turns 85.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — In Cleveland, you may have encountered Art Deco while sitting in Severance Hall, looking at the pylons as you cross the Lorain-Carnegie (Hope Memorial) Bridge, or perusing the “Muse With Violin” screen at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

But you almost certainly have not seen it distilled the way it is at a private recreation center known as the Hangar.

The Hangar was built in 1930 as part of the Dudley S. Blossom estate, in what was then Lyndhurst but is now Beachwood. Many estates and country houses of that era incorporated a private sports facility, as a place where children, their friends — and adults — could swim and play tennis indoors.

One stellar example is at Astor Court, the Vincent Astor estate in Rhinebeck, N.Y. Another is on the Long Island estate at which “Sabrina,” with Audrey Hepburn, was filmed. Only about two dozen such centers remain in the United States today.

From the outside, this Cleveland version of a private recreation center does partly resemble an airplane hangar — because of the two glass-pitched roofs, one each over the tennis court and swimming pool.

The plain stucco exterior evokes Art Moderne. But as you approach the edifice from a private gravel road, you see something a little surprising: a stripe of blue, green, black, white and tan tiles in a chevron design, which encircle the building just above eye level. Then, at the main entrance on the side, a symmetrical set of stairways and railings zigzag to the door. Halfway up, there’s a spherical sculpture of a fish.

All are only hints of the visual splendor inside.

“The Hangar is a gem,” says architect Paul Westlake. “It tells a unique story of the sophistication and wealth that Clevelanders had.”

But not many people know the story, because the Hangar is not open to the public. Today, it is owned by Charles Bolton, whose great-aunt was Blossom’s wife, Elizabeth.

It is Bolton who oversaw its restoration in the mid-1980s, which was around the same time that the Hangar was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its architect was the highly regarded Abram Garfield, whose father, James A. Garfield, served briefly as the 20th president of the United States before dying in 1881 of wounds from an assassin’s bullet.

“The Hangar shows the fluency that Abram Garfield had,” says Dean Zimmerman, chief curator of the Western Reserve Historical Society. “He’d worked in Colonial revival, in Beaux-Arts — yet this was cutting-edge.”

It was the only Art Deco building Garfield would ever create.

A functional center with Art Deco style

Dudley Blossom was a successful Cleveland businessman, but he and his wife are more widely known for their philanthropy, in particular their support of the musical arts.

Elizabeth Blossom — nee Bingham — was the sister of Frances Payne Bolton, who was married to Chester Bolton, a congressman whose seat Frances would fill upon his death. The Bolton and Blossom estates took up hundreds of acres of the land adjacent to what is now Cedar and Richmond roads.

The Blossoms, best known today for the amphitheater named for them in Cuyahoga Falls, the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra, had a longtime friendship and professional relationship with Abram Garfield.

Garfield, who would found the school of architecture that would be enfolded into Case Western Reserve University, had designed many other homes, including the Mather House at CWRU and the Hay-McKinney Mansion of the Western Reserve Historical Society. He had also designed the Blossoms’ Tudor Revival home in Lyndhurst, which was built about a decade before the Hangar was added.

The Hangar was his first foray into the design style that had swept the world since the 1925 exhibition in Paris of “arts decoratifs.” That exposition debuted a modern style characterized by a streamlined classicism, and geometric and symmetrical compositions. Its prominent motifs often included stylized animals and Aztec or Egyptian references (the latter inspired by the mania surrounding the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb).

But the Hangar had to be functional first, and the description in the application for the National Register of Historic Places — which also refers to it as a “gymkhana” — explains how it was designed and built to fulfill its purpose: “to make vigorous summer sports accessible and practicable year round.”

The T-shaped building’s clay tennis court and swimming pool were glass-roofed “to admit the sun, and to heat against winter’s chill.” Monel metal, a nonrusting alloy used in aircraft in the 1930s, was employed in the stair rails throughout the interior and exterior. Black brick framed the slate roof, and the building’s steel sash windows had wood sills, except in the pool and tennis areas, where steel framing held the skylight panels.

Crank-operated casement windows permitted natural ventilation in the pool area. The exterior entrance featured double flights of “scissor stairs” that led to the Art Deco-styled doorway. A flat portico was edged by alternating black and white tiles, and a metal grille panel added visual interest at the landing.

Garfield’s daily diary entries from the summer of 1930 show frequent mentions of the Blossom project, though he referred to it mostly as the Blossom tennis court. “Stopped at Blossom tennis court, coming along very well,” for example, and “almost completed, and I believe, a meaningful piece of work. Mural work very interesting, and I believe the building is a success.”

The mystery of the muralist

The Hangar’s glory, though, resides in its interior.

Guests who arrive in the main lounge are immediately surrounded by a vivid, sea-themed wall mural that leads upward to a sapphire-glass tray ceiling, from which hangs a sleek, silvery chandelier. The mural is signed “June Platt, 1930.”

Who was June Platt? That was what art historian Mark Bassett wanted to know. He was among a handful of art and history mavens who attended a rare tour of the Hangar in September, sponsored by the 20th Century Society.

The tour’s theme centered on the creations of Cleveland’s Rose Iron Works, and the Hangar was the star, because of the Paul Feher/Martin Rose fish-and-seahorse railing that adorns the south side of the pool.

Bassett has written the definitive book on Cowan pottery, which was made in the early 20th century at the firm’s studio in Rocky River. The Hangar, in fact, features the famed Cowan “Alice in Wonderland” doorknobs inside. (Elizabeth Blossom was known to favor Cowan pottery; she had bought several pieces at the art museum’s May Shows when they were exhibited.)

Bassett is also an instructor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and through some digging, he learned that Platt and her husband, Joseph, were a pair of powerful tastemakers in the 1930s, ’40s and beyond. Joseph Platt decorated sets for Hollywood films, including “Gone With the Wind” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca.”

June Platt, daughter of a well-known sculptor named Rudulf Evans, went on to become a nationally famous author of cookbooks and guides to entertaining, as well as a wallpaper designer.

The Platts lived mainly in New York, and later Paris. But at some point, they must have been in Cleveland. Perhaps June Platt went to art school here, says Bassett, though he hasn’t found her on the art institute’s alumni list. The only other known mural attributed to the Platts is at the Country Club of Detroit.

Platt’s mural at the Hangar shows a mastery of detail and imagination. Sea anemones, guppies, zebra fish and other samples of fantastical marine life swirl in pinks, mint greens and soothing blues, in forms both bold and delicate.

Bolton says the mural has remained in excellent shape — only a few touch-ups here and there were needed during the restoration. It shimmers as it must have in 1930. Platt’s circular painting of sea fauna, which connects to the mural, creates a focal point over the fireplace.

The artisans and the architect

Barbara Rose, granddaughter of Rose Iron Works founder Martin Rose, was on the September tour as well, to tell of Paul Feher and Martin Rose’s design work on the sea-themed railing that embraces the pool — a pure form of artistic fancy that was designed to be viewed from both sides.

“That is not often true with decorative pieces,” she says, “so it was not only designed with whimsy and imagination, but impeccably executed.”

Bob Rose, Barbara’s brother and president of the still-thriving firm, notes how Feher artfully used negative space: “The waves are open. He does use some ornamentation, with silver inserts at the cusp of the waves.”

He adds, “This is a work of graceful fun, more fanciful than was typical of Paul Feher, even though he himself was said to be a bubbly kind of guy.”

The Rose firm still has its original work orders for the railings, windows and ceiling supports of the Hangar. They indicate that Rose worked directly for Garfield, meaning the architect was closely involved with the details of the interior design.

Over the years, Garfield’s architecture firm evolved into the firm of Westlake Reed Leskosky, at whose offices the bulk of the archives from the Hangar project is housed. The Hangar is a point of pride in the firm’s history; it is the one building of Garfield’s that is highlighted on the legacy portion of the firm’s website.

“The era when this was built was a time of artistic collaboration, when architects collaborated with artists and artisans like Rose,” says Paul Westlake. “But we also had brilliant women working at the studio then, and when I see the interior of the Hangar, I can’t help but believe at least one of them was contributing to that, because it reflects such heart, such soul.”

For example, the original sketches of little colorful fish tiles that are placed around the pool area have a playful charm to them.

The ladies’ changing room at the Hangar is breathtaking: A silver vanity table with Deco mirror and pink seashell wallpaper creates an ultrafeminine touch. The furniture selected for the main lounge was apt for the time — and Art Deco design retains its allure, as manifested in the white rounded leather club chairs and the large, chevron-sided planters. The wicker furniture on the gallery patio where tennis games are observed conveys a tropical flavor.

In the 1970s, the membership rolls of the private Hangar Recreation Association read like a who’s who of Cleveland’s East Side, including names such as Burton, Meacham and Dempsey. Even Sherman Lee, the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, was an avid tennis-playing member.

Connie Searby of Pepper Pike was a child then and used to swim with friends from the Hathaway Brown School at the Hangar and attend children’s parties. She well remembers the building before Bolton restored it, when the wallpaper was covered by paint in a hue he calls “Army Sheraton green.”

“It was always a treat to come here and to be able to swim in the winter, and the style was sort of shabby chic,” she says. “There’d always be frozen pizza in the kitchen you could heat up. You paid for its with chits, on the honor system.

“Even then, though, I would think of what it must have been like to have been here in the 1930s.”

During the restoration, the Boltons (Charles’ wife, Julia, was also greatly involved) salvaged small pieces of wallpaper from protected areas and then had a specialty firm in Cincinnati re-create the original design, using a silk-screen process. The result: walls papered with vintage designs in saturated hues.

Today, Searby and her husband are members of the Hangar Recreation Association themselves and have four children who enjoy its amenities, including one daughter’s recent 11th birthday party.

Searby is entranced by the restoration work that Bolton has done, some of it in consultation with architect Peter van Dijk, and some with his cousin, the architect Kenyon Bolton of Cambridge, Mass. The general contractor for the project was Residence Artists of Chardon.

“When you take on a task like Charlie Bolton did, it’s daunting, because you are never going to please everyone, yet he somehow did,” Searby says. “All that was old and nostalgic and wonderful, he held to. What he could, he made new, and more fun.

“It was quite a feat — and so wonderful that we are preserving something like this.”

The centerpiece of a planned development

The community in which the Hangar is placed is of historical interest as well.

The Hangar was, and is, the centerpiece of a community designed by Elizabeth Blossom, which has also been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Considered to be perhaps the earliest planned unit development in Northeast Ohio, it includes 29 homes that surround a park, not far from the Hangar. Dr. Richard Distad, a onetime resident of what is now called Community Drive, did the legwork for the register nomination. Elizabeth first thought of the community when her daughter, Mary, called Molly, was getting married.

“Because Molly was a diabetic, they wanted her close by, so they had a house built for her, and then they had a house built for a doctor, too,” Distad says. “Then Mrs. Blossom decided she wanted to create an attractive and enduring community, one that would be attractive to friends with children.”

She was the benefactor with the concept, the means and the determination to create what is officially known as the Elizabeth B. Blossom Union Subdivision, which was dedicated in 1936. Her longtime friend Ethylwyn Harrison was the landscape architect with the vision and skill to plan and landscape the entire community, its woodlands and meadows, and its individual lots.

When the Distad family’s two sons were children, they’d swim and play tennis at the Hangar; in the winter, the Hangar’s longtime caretaker, Harold Lecy, would flood a nearby field to create a skating rink.

The area around the Hangar still retains its charm.

As for the Hangar itself, it is the occasional site of a wedding or a member’s private party. Charles Phillips, a florist and designer in Cleveland, has done a wedding there. Parquet flooring was placed on the tennis court, Chinese lanterns were lit, and the courtside gallery became the musicians’ stage.

“If you want to have a party that evokes Old Cleveland, this is the place,” he says. “You’d expect something like this in Jay Gatsby’s backyard.

“In the daytime, it’s bright and sunny, with light illuminating the mural. At night, it’s so evocative you expect to see ghosts from another time.

“When you step into the Hangar, you step into another world.”