Valentine’s Day has come early this year thanks to Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher’s new Netflix original “Your Place or Mine,” which sees the two rom-com staples pairing together for the first time ever onscreen as longtime best friends Debbie Dunn and Peter Coleman. Opposites through and through, the former is a Los Angeles-based type-A single mom and the latter a wealthy New York bachelor. But when they swap pads for a week, they soon discover that they may just be made for each other after all.
Marking the directorial debut of seasoned screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, of “27 Dresses” and “The Devil Wears Prada” fame, “Your Place or Mine” was shot in both the Big Apple and L.A., with the striking East and West Coast backdrops serving at the forefront of the story. As Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press muses, with all the “pretty places” featured “you might initially mistake it as a rom-com for real estate.” Indeed, Peter’s fabulously modern digs and Debbie’s charming bungalow are nothing if not aspirational. And while the former’s building can actually be found in NYC – at 60 Water St. in Brooklyn, to be exact – L.A. does most of the heavy lifting as far as the locations are concerned, with such area sites as John Muir Middle School in Burbank, Openaire restaurant in Koreatown, Emerson College Los Angeles and the oft-filmed eatery Jar making cameos throughout.
Also featured prominently is Hotel Per La, which masquerades as the Brownstone Club, the supposed Manhattan-area hotspot where Debbie hangs out several times in the film. In truth, the tony lodging can be found at 649 S. Olive St. in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Newly unveiled last September, the property is a stunning reimaging of the former Bank of Italy Building, aka Giannini Place, representing an exquisite example of adaptive reuse in a city typically all too quick to toss its history aside.
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Image Credit: Bank of Italy Building, Los Angeles (2022, September 19), Toglenn, Wikipedia. (CC BY-SA 4.0) Towering 12 stories above the corner of Olive and 7th Streets, the stately Neoclassical building was commissioned in the early 1920s by Amadeo Peter Giannini, aka A. P. Giannini, a forward-thinking financier largely considered the “father of modern consumer banking.” A true innovator, Giannini was born in Northern California to Italian immigrant parents and witnessed firsthand the trouble American newcomers had in securing loans. So, as detailed by the California Museum website, he established “an institution for the ‘little fellows’” to rectify the problem. Founding the Bank of Italy (which later merged with Bank of America) in San Francisco’s Jackson Square neighborhood in 1904, he became the first of his kind to offer financial services to the middle class, immigrants and women.
When the massive 1906 earthquake struck the city just two years later, virtually crippling the economy, A. P. had the foresight to seize the $2 million in assets stored in his vault and safely relocate them to his home 20 miles away in San Mateo. As such, he was able to continue to provide banking services to his many customers. Parallel Narratives details, “In those hectic few weeks following the earthquake, Giannini took a controversial stance; rather than shut down, as most other area bankers did, Giannini instead opened for business in North Beach. Over a plank and barrels, he began accepting deposits, extending credit and authorizing loans vital to San Franciscans’ early efforts to rebuild their city and lives. In short, A. P. bankrolled confidence in a time of extreme anxiety.” It is essentially thanks to his efforts that the city as a whole was able to rebuild.
The banker soon expanded his empire outside of San Francisco, opening branches in San Jose, Merced, Fresno, Modesto and eventually Los Angeles.
To design his Southern California headquarters, A. P. commissioned Morgan, Walls and Clements, the renowned architectural firm behind the Adamson House in Malibu, the Wiltern Theatre in Koreatown and the Deco Building in Hancock Park.
At the time of its completion in March 1923, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Bank of Italy ranked “first in number of depositors in the United States,” “with resources of more than $260,000,000” (that’s about $4.5 billion today!), making it the “largest bank in the West.” And the company’s new headquarters certainly reflected that elite status, with the paper noting that the Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects had deemed the structure “one of the four finest commercial buildings erected in Los Angeles during the last three years.”
Comprising 110,000 square feet of office space (where Curbed asserts famed author Raymond Chandler once worked) plus an additional 32,000 square feet for retail and boasting a façade fashioned from polished granite and terra cotta, the building was a sight to behold, a true monolith of commerce! Indeed, an advertisement heralding the bank’s grand opening declared it “representative in size and architectural design of the great city that it serves.”
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La No expense was spared in crafting the monumental building, with the main banking hall, a dramatic double-height space resembling an Italian palazzo, adorned with an incredible six varieties of marble including “French Escalette, Italian black and gold, French Rosato, English York Rossi, French Hauteville and Tennessee rose pink,” as detailed by the Times. Lined with Doric columns fashioned with gold leaf and capped by a coffered ceiling soaring 20 feet above the shiny floors below, the room certainly provided Giannini’s customers a dazzling spot to conduct business.
Unfortunately, while the locale served as a busy commercial hub for many years, as the city around it faced decline and redevelopment throughout the mid-century, the once magnificent structure lost patronage. By the late 1980s, the Bank of Italy Building was suffering from a 50% vacancy rate and was ultimately repossessed. Although it was acquired by the Chetrit Group in 1998 and there were talks of transforming it into a condominium complex, those plans never came to fruition and, in the interim, the property sat vacant for several decades, falling into serious disrepair. In 2015, the Times announced that “architecture critics” had “dubbed it one of the top 10 eyesores in Los Angeles.” It was an almost unbelievable turn of events for a site once considered a gem of the city’s skyline.
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La A new beginning came by way of the Sydell Group, which purchased the then-derelict building in 2015 for $39 million and transformed it into the NoMad Los Angeles Hotel, a process that took two years to complete. The upscale lodging opened in early 2018 and, sadly, only enjoyed a short tenure, falling victim to the pandemic and shuttering permanently in 2021.
Enter H.N. Captial Partners and Sage Hospitality Group, which took over the space following the closure, painstakingly working to revamp it once again, this time into Hotel Per La. The unusual moniker translates to “for the” in Italian, as explained in a press release, serving as “a nod to the building’s storied beginning as a bank for the people” and “signifying the hotel’s inclusive spirit and name, essentially meaning ‘for Los Angeles, and people like you.’”
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La Gloriously reimagined by local Los Angeles designer Jaqui Seerman, Hotel Per La shines as a true gem of the L.A. landscape once again. While updated and brightened from its former incarnation, countless original details have been exquisitely preserved, including the Bank of Italy’s marble flooring, Doric columns and coffered ceilings, each delicately woven into the fabric of the Per La’s freshly inviting aesthetic.
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La Paris-based architect/designer Jacques Garcia was tasked with revamping each of the property’s 241 rooms and suites, which range in size from 250 to 1,300 square feet. Featuring a blue and gold color scheme, the fashionable accommodations feature marble writing desks, white Oakwood flooring, flat-screen TVs and European-inspired bathrooms with Terrazzo tiled showers.
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La With nightly rates starting at $325, the hotel’s luxe amenities include a heated rooftop pool overlooking downtown, a 24-hour fitness center, 10,000 square feet of meeting and event space and three onsite eateries. Hungry visitors and guests looking to dine al fresco can partake of Mediterranean-inspired fare “influenced by California and Southern Italian coastal flavors” at Bar Clara, an outdoor watering hole situated adjacent to the pool boasting stellar city views and a massive replica of “The Orcus Mouth” sculpture from Italy’s Park of Monsters. The unique piece, one of 4,000 works of art displayed throughout the property, is adorned with the words “Missa omnium cogitationum.” Translation: “Any whispers made into the mouth will be heard by all,” which “further signifies Bar Clara’s welcoming nature of inclusion to both travelers and locals alike.”
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La The hotel’s crown jewel, though, is Per L’Ora, an upscale Italian ristorante housed in the former Bank of Italy lobby. The utterly opulent room, surrounded by Moorish-inspired arches, an iron-railed mezzanine and gleaming marble accents, is easily one of Los Angeles’ most stunning dining spaces. As such, it is no surprise that it has popped up onscreen numerous times in recent years, including in “Your Place or Mine.”
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Image Credit: The Ingalls, Courtesy of Hotel Per La It is there that Peter’s neighbor Minka (Zoë Chao) takes Debbie for a drink shortly after she touches down in New York, whereupon the two meet Theo Martin (Jesse Williams), the “most famous literary editor in all of America.” Upon entering the lofty room, Debbie says, “I don’t think I fit in here,” but that sentiment goes against the lodging’s entire philosophy. As we’ve learned, everyone fits in at Hotel Per La!
The restaurant is then seen in a handful of subsequent scenes as Debbie continues to meet up with and romance the handsome publisher.
Only the interior of Hotel Per La appears in the film. Exteriors of the Brownstone Club were captured 3,000 miles away at The Lotos Club, a private literary establishment located at 5 E. 66th St. on New York’s Upper East Side.
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Image Credit: HBO Max Per L’Ora also pops up in two season one episodes of the HBO Max comedy “Hacks,” initially appearing in “There Is No Line” as the supposed Palmetto Casino eatery where Marty Ghilain (Christopher McDonald) tells Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) that he is shortening her residency to make room for more “marquee acts” like “beatbox-forward a cappella group” Pentatonix, news the renowned comedian does not take well.
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Image Credit: HBO Max Deborah later blackmails Marty into giving back her residency dates while dining on Per L’Ora’s mezzanine level in the episode titled “Falling.”
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Image Credit: Starz Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts) and Washington Post reporter Winnie McLendon (Allison Tolman) also grab a bite on Per L’Ora’s mezzanine in the episode of the Starz limited series “Gaslit” titled “Malum in Se.”
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Image Credit: HBO Christina (Evan Rachel Wood) suffers through a bad blind date at the restaurant in the season four episode of “Westworld” titled “The Auguries.”
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Image Credit: Disney-ABC And in the season four episode of “Good Trouble” titled “Wake Up From Your Reverie,” Alice Kwan (Sherry Cola) and Sumi Liu (Kara Wang) stalk Georgia Jackson (Deanne Lauvin) at the Hotel Per La’s pool in the hopes of landing an audition for the director’s new movie.