This week, a long-awaited transformation debuted in Mobile, Alabama. The Admiral hotel reopened after a total refresh that incorporates details nodding to the city’s history.
Before charting a new course for the hotel, which opened in Mobile in 1940, Jon Weitz, the president of Avocet Hospitality, dug back even further. The port city’s past whispered of French naval leader Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, who settled the area in 1702 at King Louis XIV’s request. “‘Easter eggs’ throughout celebrate this aspect of Mobile’s story,” Weitz says of the hotel’s newly unveiled French-inspired renovation.
Those subtle nods include reproductions of Versailles paintings—including Allegory of Louis XIV as Apollo on the Chariot of the Sun—that echo the palace’s opulence. The lobby lighting, mimicking leaves falling from sprawling branches, evokes Mobile’s abundant live oaks, while a six-foot portrait of the Sun King himself oversees check-in.
Looking glasses in the new Le Moyne’s Chophouse (steak and seafood with French flair) reflect Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. And Swarovski crystals dripping from the restaurant’s chandelier illuminate d’Iberville’s role in Mobile’s hospitality heritage. “They’re a nod to the beads he gifted area Native Americans to establish friendships,” Weitz says. “The property isn’t just in Mobile; it’s of Mobile.”
