Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel

Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel opened on 26 October 2021 in a landmark 1926 building in the South Park district, previously a private club and, for nearly fifty years, a YWCA. Proper Hospitality's fourth property and first in Los Angeles pairs Kelly Wearstler's interiors with a Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne culinary program across three restaurants, including the rooftop Cara Cara.

The place

The hotel occupies 1100 South Broadway, in Downtown Los Angeles's South Park district, on the edge of the Fashion District and a short walk from LA Live and the Convention Center — a stretch of downtown better known for wholesale garment showrooms than hotels before this opening.

The concept

Architects Alexander Curlett and Claud Beelman designed the building in 1926 for the Commercial Club of Southern California, a private club that occupied it until the Depression forced a closure in 1932. It reopened in 1941 as the Cabrillo Hotel, was later renamed the Case Hotel, and then spent nearly five decades, from 1965 to 2012, as a YWCA. KOR Group and Alma Development bought the landmark Renaissance Revival building in 2013 and spent years converting it into Proper Hospitality's fourth hotel and first Los Angeles property. Kelly Wearstler's interiors lean into that layered institutional history rather than smoothing it over, mixing Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican and Moroccan references across a building whose bones are unmistakably 1920s civic architecture. The result targets a design-conscious traveler who wants downtown grit with boutique-hotel polish, distinct from the convention-hotel crowd nearer LA Live.

Dining & wellness

Cara Cara, the rooftop restaurant and bar next to the pool, serves Californian dishes such as al pastor tacos and wood-fired seafood paella with panoramic downtown views. Cabrillo handles all-day dining on the ground floor, and Dahlia is an intimate cocktail lounge with a wine list curated by the Lucques Group. James Beard Award winners Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne developed the culinary program across all three spaces.