Hotel Barclay from “Little Fires Everywhere”

Not only do The Morning Show and Little Fires Everywhere share a leading lady, Reese Witherspoon, but the two new series also seem to be sharing locations!  Both made use of The Wolves, an insanely beautiful downtown Los Angeles bar that I blogged about in December, as well as Hotel Barclay, a historic and oft-filmed DTLA lodging that I covered way back in 2011.  Considering the latter’s recent screen cred, though, I figured it was worthy of a redo.

Hotel Barclay, which is also referred to as the “Barclay Hotel,” began life in 1897 as the Van Nuys Hotel.

Commissioned by businessman Isaac Newton Van Nuys, the Beaux Arts-style property was designed by the Morgan & Walls architecture firm.

During its early days, the 6-story hotel was the epitome of luxury, boasting a light-filled lobby lined with stained glass windows, a Ladies’ Parlor, a 150-seat formal dining room, a casual grill, a bar, a billiard room, a cigar stand, a newsstand, a buffet, a barbershop, and 160 rooms, each with both a long-distance and local telephone, as well as electric service.  Per the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Barclay was, in fact, the first hotel in the city to provide those last two luxuries.

In 1929, ownership changed hands, the fancy dining room was closed and the property re-dubbed Hotel Barclay.  The move kicked off a decline not only in the building’s exclusivity, but also its patronage.

Though it fell into some disrepair in the years that followed, eventually becoming a residential hotel (you can read up on the more sordid parts of its history here), the Barclay’s original interior somehow remained intact and still, miraculously, looks much as it did on opening day over 120 years ago!

During my 2011 stalk of the place, the manager invited me inside for a look at the lobby, which is where the interior photos in this post come from.  I was practically giddy walking around snapping pictures of all of the historic enclaves!  The hotel is like a time capsule come to life!

The Barclay, which, again per the Los Angeles Conservancy, is the city’s oldest continuously operating hotel, was put on the market in 2016 for $40 million and eventually sold in 2018 for $21 million.  There are currently plans in the works to turn it into a luxury boutique lodging, though it does not appear as if that project has gotten off the ground yet.

In the “Duo” episode of Little Fires Everywhere, Hotel Barclay stands in for the exterior of New York’s fictional Varick Hotel, where Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) stays while visiting Manhattan.

Interiors were shot at The Mayfair Hotel, another historic DTLA lodging that has been completely revamped since my 2012 post on it, meaning I have to get back out there stat!

On The Morning Show, the Barclay also portrays a New York locale – the Manhattan apartment building where Hannah Shoenfeld (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) lives, said to be at 103 Wooster Street in SoHo.  The site initially appears at the end of episode 7, “Open Waters,” in a scene that continues into episode 9, “Play the Queen,” in which Mitch Kessler (Steve Carrel) asks Hannah to come forward and say that the network bosses were complicit in his predatory behavior.

The Barclay is also featured in The Morning Show’s Season 1 finale, “The Interview” in which (spoiler alert!) Claire Conway (Bel Powley) shows up to discover than Hannah has overdosed.

In the episode, it is apparent that a façade containing a fake set of stairs and an elevator was added just beyond the hotel’s front doors for the shoot.

In real life, the Barclay’s front doors open directly into the lobby, as you can see in the photo below.

Only the exterior of the Barclay was utilized on The Morning Show.  I believe interior scenes involving Hannah'”‘”‘s apartment may have been shot at the Pan American Lofts, located at 253 South Broadway.  You can check out what a unit in that building looks like here.

Hotel Barclay has quite an extensive film and television resume – so much so that it would be impossible for me to chronicle all of its appearances here.  A few of the more notable include . . .

Way back in 1975, Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) chased a suspect through the hotel in the pilot episode of Starsky & Hutch.

The lobby is used extensively as Café 24 Heures, where Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) works and where Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) regularly dines, in 1997’s As Good As It Gets.

Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) gets kicked out of the place for writing bad checks at the beginning of Catch Me If You Can.

Hotel Barclay is the Columbian lodging where John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie) meet in 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The lobby masks as the café where Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his friends hang out in the 2009 drama (500) Days of Summer.

Also in 2009, Detectives Flynn (Tony Denison) and Provenza (G.W. Bailey) dine in the hotel’s former restaurant, which sits vacant in real life, in the Season 5 episode of The Closer titled “Tapped Out.”

Leonardo DiCaprio visits the Barclay once again as Cobb in 2011’s Inception.  This time it’s posing as a casino in Africa.  (One of the hotel’s 2nd floor rooms is also where Cobb was dunked into a bathtub in an earlier scene).

Fellow stalker Anne informed me via a comment on my original post that a now-vacant anteroom at the lodging masked as Drake’s Magic Shop in the Season 3 episode of Castle titled “Poof, You’re Dead,” which aired in 2011.  The show’s production team must really love the Barclay!  The hotel was also featured in the episodes titled “Ghosts,” “Knockdown,” “Swan Song,” “Sleeper,” “XY,” and “The Blame Game.”

NYPD detectives interview a bunch of clowns outside of the Barclay in the Season 7 episode of CSI: NY titled “To What End,” which also aired in 2011.

In 2018, Hotel Barclay popped up as the supposed San Antonio, Texas-area Gunter Hotel in the Season 2 episode of Timeless titled “The King of the Delta Blues.”

And it portrays the supposed Lahore hotel where Bravo Team captures a terrorist in the Season 2 episode of Seal Team titled “Never Out of the Fight,” which aired in 2019.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hotel Barclay, aka the Varick Hotel from the “Duo” episode of Little Fires Everywhere, is located at 103 West 4th Street in downtown Los Angeles.

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