ABSTRACT
Focusing on new American-financed international business and tourist hotels of the late 1940s, this chapter analyses these as transcultural spaces of modernity on the cusp of the jet age. It reflects upon the origins of the International Style and its dissemination through hotel architecture, interior design, and promotion. It focuses on the Statler hotel in Washington, DC, completed in 1943; the Hotel Jaragua at Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, completed in 1946; and the Caribe Hilton at San Juan in Puerto Rico which opened in 1949. These three hotels were important precedents for American and international post-war hotel design more generally. The chapter is based on research carried out for the author’s 2020 book Jet Age Hotels and the International Style.
