History of Brown's Hotel

Brown's Hotel was founded in 1837. In 1859, Brown's was purchased by the Ford family. Henry Ford installed fixed baths, electric lighting and a lift (one of the first in Britain). He also created the first public dining room in London - prior to this, hotel guests hired individual suites and dined privately.

In 1889, the Ford family purchased the St George's Hotel in Albemarle Street, which backed on to Brown's, and combined the two hotels, adding a fifth floor to both properties. On Albemarle Street, a new front of stucco and entrance portico were built, and two panels of blue and gold mosaic bearing the legend of Brown's and St George's were placed on the wall (both still exist today).

The hotel has hosted some notable people. Alexander Graham Bell went to stay in 1876 to demonstrate his new invention - the telephone - and the first successful telephone call in Great Britain was made from Brown's in 1876. The Niagara Room commemorates the meeting held there in 1890 by the International Niagara Commission, which agreed on 'the adoption of electrical methods as the chief means of distributing Niagara power'; the inauguration of the alternating current system resulted and has subsequently been adopted throughout the world.

In 1886, Theodore Roosevelt stayed at Brown's prior to his second marriage. Royal guests have included Napoleon III and Princess Eugenie in 1871, Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians (who took refuge in the hotel during World War I), Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia and King George II of the Hellenes, who stayed at Brown's for nine years after his exile from Greece in 1924.

Celebrities and writers who have loved Brown's include Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia, Rudyard Kipling (who completed The Jungle Book there) and Agatha Christie, who based her 1965 thriller At Bertram's Hotel on Brown's. Historian John Lothrop Motley stayed at the hotel in 1874, as shown in a letter he wrote on the 17th of June of that year, to Dutch historian Groen van Prinsterer.

The hotel became part of the Rocco Forte collection of luxury hotels on 3 July 2003, having once been managed by Raffles International Hotels. During 2004-2005 the hotel underwent a £24 million refurbishment and re-opened in December 2005