The Westin San Jose

The Westin San Jose occupies the Sainte Claire Hotel, a six-story building at 302 S Market Street in downtown San Jose. It reopened under the Westin flag on 9 July 2015 with 171 rooms, 16 of them suites, after a renovation of the guestrooms, corridors, lobby and public spaces. The building itself dates from 1926. Only the brand changed in 2015, not the structure.

The place

The hotel sits on South Market Street, across from the Civic Auditorium site that the original developer donated, and close to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and San Jose State University. Downtown shops, restaurants and attractions are within walking distance.

The concept

San Francisco architects Weeks and Day, known for theaters and hotels, designed the Sainte Claire in Italian Renaissance Revival and Mediterranean Revival styles, with French and Spanish references. The exterior is tawny brick on floors two to six above rusticated buff stone at street level, with paired windows in arched frames. T. S. Montgomery, a San Jose realtor and developer, financed it.

In its day it was the premier grand hotel of the South Peninsula, a stop between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The building has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 3 June 1980.

Its flag has changed three times: Hyatt Sainte Claire after a restoration in the 1990s, Hotel Sainte Claire in the 2000s, then The Westin San Jose on 9 July 2015. Starwood first announced the Westin in 2012, for an opening in July 2013, so the conversion ran about two years behind plan.

The lobby, with coffered ceilings, is the best preserved interior and recalls the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. Hand-painted ceilings in the lobby, the Spartan Room and the Empire Room were lost to earlier alterations. Original wood guestroom details and hand-carved doors to the retail areas survive, and many rooms keep their original bathroom fixtures. The renovation kept the ceiling molding and added a living wall in the lobby.

All 171 rooms were fitted with the Westin Heavenly Bed and Heavenly Bath.

Dining & wellness

Il Fornaio, the Italian restaurant chain, is the hotel's full-service restaurant, and the hotel describes it as serving fresh Italian cooking. A lobby lounge sits beside it. The hotel also has a fitness studio.

For events, the renovation produced about 10,000 square feet of meeting space, aimed at weddings, galas and business functions.