A hotel beloved by book-lovers in Newport’s Nye Beach neighborhood has undergone a renovation and a rebrand with new owners. The Sylvia Beach Hotel will reopen as Hotel Sylvia on July 1.
Portland-based VIP Hospitality Group purchased the building last year from Sally Ford and Goody Cable. When it was the Sylvia Beach Hotel, the literary theme included unique rooms celebrating different authors.
Jenny Nelson, Vice President of VIP Hospitality, told KLCC the company is keeping the literary theme. And she said they wanted to keep the name Sylvia to honor the namesake of its previous iteration. Sylvia Beach, an American, was known in the 1920s for her Paris bookstore, Shakespeare & Company.
“Some of the authors that people will remember that were at Sylvia Beach Hotel that will now be at Hotel Sylvia include William Shakespeare, and Alice Walker,” she said. “Also, Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, which was a favorite.”
Other rooms are decorated after genres: mystery, romance, or literary nonfiction, for example.
Nelson said they completely renovated the hotel, which was built in 1913.
“We’ve worked really hard to preserve the building the best that we can,” she said. The windows and siding were replaced.
Updates were also made to the heating system and bathrooms, and an espresso machine was added in the lobby.
The Sylvia Beach Hotel had the Tables of Content Restaurant on its ground floor. The Hotel Sylvia will have Café Sylvia, which will be open to the public, serving breakfast. Nelson said they plan to have special occasion dinners on holidays.
She said they are keeping some employees who previously worked at the Sylvia Beach Hotel.
