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Building the Cold War - Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Paperback, New Ed)
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Building the Cold War - Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Paperback, New Ed)
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In postwar Europe and the Middle East, Hilton hotels were quite
literally "little Americas." For American businessmen and tourists,
a Hilton Hotel--with the comfortable familiarity of an
English-speaking staff, a restaurant that served cheeseburgers and
milkshakes, trans-Atlantic telephone lines, and, most important,
air-conditioned modernity--offered a respite from the disturbingly
alien. For impoverished local populations, these same features lent
the Hilton a utopian aura. The Hilton was a space of luxury and
desire, a space that realized, permanently and prominently, the new
and powerful presence of the United States.
"Building the Cold War" examines the architectural means by which
the Hilton was written into the urban topographies of the major
cities of Europe and the Middle East as an effective representation
of the United States. Between 1953 and 1966, Hilton International
built sixteen luxury hotels abroad. Often the Hilton was the first
significant modern structure in the host city, as well as its
finest hotel. The Hiltons introduced a striking visual contrast to
the traditional architectural forms of such cities as Istanbul,
Cairo, Athens, and Jerusalem, where the impact of its new
architecture was amplified by the hotel's unprecedented siting and
scale. Even in cities familiar with the Modern, the new Hilton
often dominated the urban landscape with its height, changing the
look of the city. The London Hilton on Park Lane, for example, was
the first structure in London that was higher than St. Paul's
cathedral.
In his autobiography, Conrad N. Hilton claimed that these hotels
were constructed for profit and for political impact: "an integral
part of my dream was toshow the countries most exposed to Communism
the other side of the coin--the fruits of the free world."
Exploring everything the carefully drafted contracts for the
buildings to the remarkable visual and social impact on their host
cities, Wharton offers a theoretically sophisticated critique of
one of the Cold War's first international businesses and
demonstrates that the Hilton's role in the struggle against
Communism was, as Conrad Hilton declared, significant, though in
ways that he could not have imagined.
Many of these postwar Hiltons still flourish. Those who stay in
them will learn a great deal about their experience from this new
assessment of hotel space.
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