Ace Hotel is a chain of hotels headquartered in Los Angeles and New York City. Founded in 1999 in Seattle, it operates hotels internationally on four continents, with locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City; Palm Springs, California; Seattle, Washington; Kyoto, Japan; Toronto, Canada; Sydney, Australia and Athens, Greece, with a hotel soon to open in Fukuoka, Japan.
History
In 1999, the first Ace Hotel was opened. Friends Alex Calderwood, Wade Weigel, and Doug Herrick purchased a Seattle halfway house and transformed it into an affordable hotel that would appeal to the creative class. Calderwood and Weigel had previously founded Rudy's, a reinvigorated traditional barbershop concept, in Seattle, which eventually expanded to more than a dozen locations. They also founded the experiential marketing company Neverstop, and the audiovisual arts platform ARO.Space with Pearl Jam co-founder Stone Gossard and Kung Faux creator Mic Neumann, who is credited for bringing in such artists as Kaws and Shepard Fairey to decorate the walls of various Rudy's and Ace Hotel locations.[1]
In 2006, the group opened a second hotel in Portland, Oregon, followed by properties in Palm Springs, California, and New York City, in 2009.