It’s kind of astonishing that a destination-worthy hotel has eluded Silver Lake for so long, right? After all, the neighborhood has been synonymous with a certain sort of L.A.-cool for roughly three decades. But aside from Silver Lake Pool & Inn’s motel glow-up a few years ago, there hasn’t really been a proper place for travelers to rest their heads in the area.
Hotel Lucile stands to reshape the hospitality map along Sunset Junction—and the wider neighborhood—with one of L.A.’s splashiest hotel-meets-restaurant openings in recent memory. As of today, the 95-year-old church-turned-hotel is welcoming overnight guests to its 25 rooms, and it’s bound to be packing locals into Sous Sous, a Southern-inspired French restaurant situated in the divinely detailed nave.
Situated at the corner of Griffith Park Boulevard and Lucile Avenue, about a block up the street from the faded polka dots of Sunset Triangle Plaza, Hotel Lucile has taken up residence at a 1931 Romanesque Revival sanctuary, built as a Presbyterian church and later used as everything from a performance theater to an antique market. It’s worth clarifying upfront, given the surprising number of people who’ve asked: No, it’s not the infamous Katy Perry church—the former convent the singer was once interested in buying is located a couple of miles up the street in Los Feliz. The confusion is understandable, though: Perry’s dramatic legal battle over that property involved a local restaurateur who once owned and later relinquished this church in Silver Lake, with plans for a hospitality conversion that never came to fruition.
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielSous Sous
But Casetta Hotels, which specializes in reviving bygone businesses and buildings into contemporary boutique hotels, has managed to turn the empty church into an alluring destination, with many of the building’s most distinctive details still intact. You’ll check in where you once would have received holy water. Stained glass depictions of the 12 apostles look out over the dining room. The iron-framed windows in the guest rooms are all original. And though it doesn’t toll anymore, the bell tower still stands and anchors the view from the rooftop.
“The amount of people that came in as second-, third-generation Silver Lake people, they were like, ‘Thank God you guys are keeping the essence of the building,’” Jennifer Armbruster, president of Casetta Hotels, tells me during a tour of the property earlier this month.
That essence also includes the idea of a church being a neighborhood gathering place, and for locals, on-site restaurant Sous Sous will be the space to fill that role. French for “under” or “below,” the ground-floor dinner spot’s menu mixes together two separate southern regions: France’s Nice and Marseille as well as the United States’ Charleston and New Orleans, all under the care of chef Patrick Costa and beverage director Lee Zaremba, the team behind Arts District pizzeria De La Nonna and its adjoining bar, the Let’s Go Disco. Expect a seafood-focused meal that swaps rich, buttery decadence for olive oil and spice, and a bar menu—stocked with bright wines and a wide selection of N/A offerings—that narrows the cocktail focus more onto New Orleans, with a Sazerac, frappé and brandy crusta, plus a classic take on a martini.
Photograph: Courtesy Patrick Michael ChinSous Sous
Photograph: Courtesy Patrick Michael ChinSous Sous
Photograph: Courtesy Patrick Michael ChinSous Sous
Speaking of martinis, if you spend the night, you just might spot general manager Anthony Gutierrez delivering one to your door around 5pm. Certainly a singular hotel amenity, he says the door-to-door martini cart started as a joke between him and Laney Langenstein, the company’s head of marketing and strategy, after a 14-hour day that left them ready for a cocktail.
With the doors to the hotel now open, Gutierrez runs the day-to-day operations, but he’s already invested plenty of time behind the scenes. He’s been with Casetta for just over five years, nearly the hotel group’s entire lifetime. Since 2019, the company has worked on transforming storied SoCal properties into boutique stays, and Gutierrez splits his time overseeing some of these, including the Surfrider Malibu, Big Bear’s Hotel Marina Riviera and the Pearl Hotel in San Diego. But for the past two years, he’s also doubled as the project manager on the final stages of Hotel Lucile’s construction, and since the start of the summer it’s been his sole focus.
When Gutierrez first joined the project, he stepped inside of an unkempt church, with dulled wood beams and holes in the wall and ceiling. He compares it to the opening of the series Fear the Walking Dead, which debuted with a scene in a dilapidated church amid the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse. And you guessed it: That was filmed at what’s now Hotel Lucile.
Photograph: Michael Juliano for Time OutHotel Lucile
Now it’s a radically more refined environment, and one that changes by the hour; the hotel’s “find your light” tagline is no joke, with shifting patches of jewel tones that stream through the stained glass windows in the dining room and staircases. (Though Sous Sous is currently only open for dinner, on aesthetics alone, I’d suggest grabbing an early reservation so that you can still catch some sunlight filtering through the windows.)
The stained glass is a strong motif, one that even works its way into the rooms and retail shop. “All of our properties have a good luck charm that’s related to their history and story,” Gutierrez explains. “And with the stained glass being original—about 100 years old—we were looking for some way to honor it.” The Casetta team’s research kept pointing them to Janel Foo of Pasadena’s Stained Glass Supplies, who crafted a pair of glass coasters that, when placed together, mimics the pattern of the stained glass behind Sous Sous’ banquettes. (Side note: I’ve coincidentally taken a fused glass class at Stained Glass Supplies to make this style of coaster, and I highly recommend it.)
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Robbie ZieglerHotel Lucile
You can’t wander far at Hotel Lucile without bumping into something beautiful to look at. The super-local Rhett Baruch Gallery curated a rotating mix of artwork (for sale) in the guest rooms, restaurant and common areas. And Uprise Art commissioned artist Erin Lynn Welsh to create a pair of murals for the dining room: a beautifully textured, red-hued landscape of Eaton Canyon—started well before the Eaton Fire—and a blue-green representation of Elysian Park on the opposite wall. Elaborate floral arrangements top the pew-like seating areas (which can be cleared out to open up the floor for special events) in the dining room, where Heather Tierney of the Butcher’s Daughter also sourced decor and vinyl from France.
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
The periphery of the restaurant space is for now just for hotel guests. The front portion of Sous Sous will be curtained off during the day and serve espresso, coffee and grab-and-go items for lunch and dinner to hotel guests. Above it, the choir loft—which offers an incredible bird’s-eye view of the church auditorium—serves as the hotel’s true lobby, with couches clustered around cafe tables, to which you can order drinks from the bar below. You’ll find a similar setup on the rooftop, which is surrounded by an herb garden and native flora and offers an up-close perspective of the church’s bell tower and peek-a-boo views of the Downtown L.A. skyline.
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Armbruster expects these spaces to move into a second, more public-facing phase around November or December. The cafe will launch full lunch service and the choir loft will welcome neighbors via a coworking-like membership service (which will include access to some of the hotel’s other amenities). The for-hotel-guests pool will operate a mobile bar, and much farther down the line, a building that the hotel owns on the south side of the pool will be converted into a wellness space with a sauna, cold plunge and spa services.
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Most notably, the rooftop will open up to folks with a reservation for Sous Sous, with hopes to host small DJ sets, wine tastings and events with local partners. It just might become Silver Lake’s first proper rooftop bar—but don’t expect a full-blown scene. Gutierrez takes being an inviting and upstanding neighbor seriously, so he notes that for the rooftop, “we’re not going to be open excessively late, we close at a responsible hour.”
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
As for the hotel part, you’ll find 25 rooms spread across three floors; as of publication, weekday prices for the next few months start in the mid-$400s per night, while weekend rates nudge closer to $500. On my tour, I first scoped out a premium king room (the third tier of room sizes) that upgrades the standard, calmly colorful accommodations with a sitting area and work desk. No matter the configuration, the bathrooms are exquisite, with green or white tiling paired with brass finishes, and frosted stained glass windows in the shower that add a gentle but sublime glow to the bathroom. You’ll find local touches, too, like robes that come from Venice’s Parachute, and snacks and sundries in the mini bar that are put together by—who else?—Erewhon.
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
Photograph: Courtesy Chase DanielHotel Lucile
I was also taken inside of the Lucile Suite, the top-of-the-line room with a soaking tub, second bathroom, cozy arched seating nook and direct access to a slender, private courtyard at the center of the building. I peeked at some footage from a pre-opening dinner held here, with a long table set up in the center and wine chilled in the fountain on the edge of the space; it’s easy to see the potential of a deep-pocketed patron buying out a block of rooms or the entire hotel for a wedding or corporate event.
But there’s plenty that should attract the typical solo or small-party out-of-town visitor. “If you want to sincerely ingrain yourself in the local neighborhood, this is the place to be; if you’re looking for truly unique architecture and art, this is the place to be,” Gutierrez says. “We’re not going to have our 25 guest rooms worth of travelers filling [Sous Sous] every single evening. It will be people from L.A., so if you want to get ingrained with the locals, this is where you’re going to go.”