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The Grand Hotel Birmingham
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Thomson Plevins opened the Grand on 1 February 1879 for Isaac Horton, a French Renaissance front of 22 bays on Colmore Row, looking straight at St Philip's. Stone fell onto the pavement, the hotel closed in 2002, and a demolition plan died when the building was listed Grade II* in 2004. Hortons' Estate reopened it in May 2021 with 185 rooms, in a house where Churchill, Chaplin and King George VI had already slept or dined.
- 185 rooms
- Opened 1879
- Neighborhood: City Centre
- Architect: Thomson Plevins
About The Grand Hotel Birmingham
- Martin & Chamberlain's Grosvenor Room, finished in the 1890s, runs 100 feet long and 32 feet high with no columns. Deep steel girders hold the ceiling, possibly the first of their kind in Britain.
- After operator Arthur Field failed, Hortons' Estate spent £40,000 in 1890 rebuilding the interiors in a Louis XIV manner, then added 75 bedrooms on Barwick Street.
- In 2012, while the Grand was still a building site, Stephen Poliakoff filmed Dancing on the Edge in the Grosvenor Room and called it the Imperial Ballroom.
History
Isaac Horton and his architect Thomson Plevins assembled the block after the Second Birmingham Improvement Act cleared Georgian terraces off Colmore Row. Work started in 1875. The hotel opened on 1 February 1879 with 100 rooms ready and about 60 still unfinished, plus stock rooms where commercial travellers could show their goods. Arthur Field of Newcastle took the lease. From 1890, Martin & Chamberlain rebuilt the interiors for £40,000 and, in 1893 to 1895, added the Grosvenor Room, a steel-spanned ballroom 100 feet long. King George VI, Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney and Joe Louis came through in the early twentieth century. The house closed in 1969, reopened under later lessees, and shut again in August 2002. Falling stone brought the scaffolding. A 2003 demolition idea ended when the building was listed Grade II* on 4 May 2004. Hortons' Estate, with Arup on the stone and Berman Guedes Stretton on the restoration, reopened the hotel on 18 May 2021 with 185 rooms.
The setting
43 Colmore Row, the block bounded by Church Street, Barwick Street and Livery Street, facing St Philip's Cathedral. The restoration moved the main door to Church Street. The cathedral yard is what the windows look at.
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