Carl Aubuchon began building La Concha in 1925 and opened it on 22 January 1926, after a short labor strike. The owners had spent $768,000 on the structure and $130,000 on furnishings, and the hotel was marketed as fireproof to industrialists, dignitaries and high society. A room cost $3 a night.
It is now La Concha Key West, Autograph Collection, and has been a Historic Hotels of America member since 1991.
430 Duval Street, on the main street of Old Town Key West, a few blocks from the center of the district.
The building was the tallest on the island when it opened, and its tower is the landmark Ernest Hemingway has Harry Morgan mention in To Have and Have Not as he sails away from Key West.
The concept
Within six months of the 1929 crash the struggling hotel was sold and renamed the Key West Colonial Hotel, though locals kept calling it La Concha. Later chapters include periods as a Holiday Inn and a Crowne Plaza, before the return to the original name under Marriott's Autograph Collection.
The literary record is specific. Historic Hotels of America says Hemingway began writing To Have and Have Not here, and Tennessee Williams lived in the hotel after 1947, spending about two years revising his work before he finished A Streetcar Named Desire and bought a house on the edge of town. President Harry Truman is said to have sat in the lobby.
The hotel counts 160 rooms, among them seven rooftop suites. The historic rooms are described with peacock-colored ceilings and dark-wood plantation furniture, and the Deluxe King Balcony Suite is one of the categories the hotel promotes.
Dining & wellness
430 Duval Restaurant serves island-inspired small and large plates in a casual but polished room. A bar on the seventh floor remains a favorite of locals and visitors for its views over Old Town, a tradition that goes back to the 1935 Labor Day parade, watched from the top of the hotel.
