Hotel Cortez

The Hotel Cortez is a fictional hotel featured in the FX Network television series American Horror Story. It was the main setting for season five of the show, which was billed under the appropriately named heading of "Hotel".

Description & History
The Hotel Cortez is located in Los Angeles, California. It is known for its dark history, its bizarre clientele and its even more macabre staff. The cost to stay in an average room at the Cortez was once $30, but the price went up to $150 a night after it underwent extensive remodeling.

The Hotel Cortez was built by self-made millionaire James March in 1925. March designed the hotel with various hidden passageways, and other oddities such as inexplicable sliding chutes and corridors with no exits. When the construction foreman questioned March about these unorthodox design ideas, March told him that he was looking at old plans. He then took him into his office, where he stabbed the man to death with a sword, and then disposed of the body.

James March used Room 64 as his personal office and turned the Cortez into a veritable abattoir so he could satiate his maniacal cravings. By the 1930s, local law enforcement learned about what had been going on and came to the hotel to arrest him. March and his co-conspirator, the ever-faithful laundress Miss Evers, were unwilling to be taken alive. March shot Miss Evers in the head, then slit his own throat as the police banged down the door.

In 1994, a heroin addict named Donovan came to the hotel with the emotionally unstable Hypodermic Sally. Donovan's mother, Iris, tracked them down, but when she had seen how Sally had gotten her son to take drugs, she pushed her out of the window. Sally survived however, and Iris eventually became a receptionist at the hotel.

In 2010, a young boy named Holden Lowe was abducted from his father, homicide investigator John Lowe, at an amusement park. He was taken back to the Hotel Cortez, where he locked away in a room with other children. Donovan eventually became involved with the Countess, and the two would engaged in acts of supreme hedonism, including murder and blood orgies. Another strange member of the hotel's staff is a man who calls himself Liz Taylor (after the famous movie star). This gaunt, bald transvestite worked the front desk, but could also be seen administering to the hotel's other needs.

Notable rooms at the Hotel Cortez include Room 51, which played host to an incident of an unknown nature, which required a chambermaid to clean blood stains out of the bed sheets. The most notorious room at the hotel however was Room 64, which was usually closed off. Iris used her own discretion when deciding which customers would have the misfortune of being allocated to Room 64, which was the lair of a grotesque and murderous creature. Two Swedish tourists, Aggie and Vendela were ushered to Room 64 after complaining about the smell in their own room. They were later caged and tortured, and fed a special nutrient shake to purge their bodies of all impurities. A blonde-haired effeminate man named Gabriel came to stay at the hotel, but after getting snippy with Iris, was sent to Room 64. The creature from the room had its way with Gabriel, anally raping him with a strap-on while Hypodermic Sally watched, begging the dying man to tell her that he loved her.

In 2015, the hotel came under new ownership. A real estate agent named Marcy brokered the sale of the establishment to a wealthy entrepreneur named Will Drake.

To celebrate his new role at the hotel, Will Drake hosted a fashion show. One of his star models was an uptight white male named Tristan Duffy. During the runway show, Tristan had a violent outburst at one of the guests and stormed off to his room to do some drugs. This caught the attention of the Countess, who became enamored with the rage she sensed inside of him. She decided to take him as her new plaything and turned him into a vampire.

Points of interest

 * Black Closet: The Black Closet was one of the original secret rooms in the hotel back when it was constructed in 1925. James Patrick March used this as a personal "murder room", where he would stab his victims to death. Years later, March would tell neophyte vampire and up-and-coming serial killer Tristan Duffy about his Black Closet.

Room 33


 * Room 33 is but one of the many rooms located at the Hotel Cortez. Hypodermic Sally once commented about having to "feed the thing" in Room 33. She was not looking forward to this detail.

Room 51


 * An incident took place in Room 51 on the day that Vendela and Agnetha first arrived at the hotel. They found the chambermaid Miss Evers rigorously scrubbing blood stains out of a bed-sheet that came out of Room 51.


 * Room 55: This was the room that Iris stayed in. After a heated argument with Donovan, which resulted in her son telling Iris to kill herself, she decided to take him up on his suggestion. She brought Hypodermic Sally to Room 55 and had her give her an overdose of drugs. When this failed to kill her, Sally placed a bag around Iris' head and suffocated her. Donovan burst into the room, and upon seeing his mother near the point of death, elected to turn her into a vampire.

Room 64


 * Room 64 is one of the many rooms found at the Hotel Cortez, located in Los Angeles, California. When the hotel was built by developer and oil baron James March in 1925, Room 64 became his personal office. In the early 1930s, when police raided the hotel to bring March to justice for a series of gruesome murders, James and his faithful laundress Miss Evers decided to take their own lives. March shot Miss Evers in the head, then slit his own throat as the police battered down the door.


 * In the intervening years, Room 64 became synonymous with death and carnage. It was only used for specific purposes, and was not regularly rented out to guests. Since many of the residents of the hotel were vampires, Room 64 became an ideal place for them to cull fresh prey. The receptionist, Iris, had full discretion to select patrons to assign to Room 64, many of whom were people that Iris took a disliking towards.


 * In 2015, two Swedish tourists named Vendela and Agnetha arrived at the Hotel Cortez, but upon finding it too far away from where they wished to visit, demanded a refund. Iris plainly told them that there are no refunds at the hotel and gave them a regular room. When Vendela and Agnetha began complaining about the smell coming from their room, Iris relocated them to Room 64. This was no more desirable than the previous room, and Agnetha said that she was going to give the Hotel Cortez a very negative review on Yelp. While there, two blonde-haired vampire children attacked them and the two women were taken prisoner. They were brought to a different room in the hotel where they were drained of blood in order to feed the vampire children that resided there.


 * Another victim of Room 64 was a man named Gabriel. Gabriel was an up and coming film actor who offended Iris with his dismissive arrogant attitude when he complained about the rates. Iris told him that she was “feeling magnanimous” and gave him a key to Room 64. Gabriel thought that he was just going to spend the evening shooting up heroin, but the presence of the vampire monster and a junkie resident known as Hypodermic Sally changed all that. The creature violently assaulted Gabriel, sodomizing him with a razor-tipped strap-on, while Sally stood as solemn witness to the act. Tearfully, she told Gabriel that his suffering would end if he would but confess his love for her. Gabriel repeated the words, "I love you, Sally", and was then lost to the world. His next sensation was waking up sewn inside the mattress with Sally hovering before him, taunting him.


 * Meanwhile, a Los Angeles homicide detective named John Lowe was investigating a string of murders that involved victims who had broken one of the Ten Commandments. The killer actually made contact with Lowe and told him that he if he wanted to learn more, he needed to meet him at Room 64 at the Hotel Cortez. Lowe went to the hotel and demanded to see the room. Nothing appeared to be amiss, so Lowe began renting the room for himself, confidant that the hotel was sure to yield clues as to the recent killings.


 * John Lowe's first night in Room 64 was fraught with strange hallucinations. Both in his dreams, and even while partially awake, he saw images of his son Holden, whom he had believed had died five years earlier.

Staff

 * Iris
 * James March
 * Liz Taylor
 * Will Drake
 * Hazel Evers

Residents

 * The Countess
 * Donovan
 * John Lowe
 * Lachlan Drake
 * Ramona Royale
 * Hypodermic Sally

Guests

 * Aggie
 * Gabriel
 * John Lowe
 * Queenie
 * Vendela

The children

 * Holden Lowe