Once upon a time, in the
Alexandria Hotel's heyday, movie stars and other celebrities, including Valentino, Mary Miles Minter, Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso and Jack Dempsey were guests.
Charlie Chaplin reportedly kept a suite at the Alexandria and did improvisations in the lobby, and western star Tom Mix reportedly rode his horse through the lobby. The large oriental rug in the lobby was called the "million-dollar carpet", because there was purportedly a $1 million worth of business done there every day.
It was there that D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks met in 1919 to form United Artists. U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, and many foreign dignitaries, also stayed at the hotel while visiting Los Angeles.
Today, it's refuge to the adventurous, the fearless, the unwanted ... and if you can sneak by one of the sleepy security guards, you can wander around in the empty hallways, peek into half closed doors or sneak up to the spectacular roof.
Just don't get caught.





