Published: August 18, 2002
(Page 2 of 2)
As Wharton writes, the Hilton was sited to turn its back on Cairo, a medieval city of crowds and poverty. Instead, the windows and balconies of the best rooms framed postcard views of the pyramids, essentially erasing 4,000 years of Egyptian history from the tourist's experience (and obstructing Cairo's view of Egypt's own past in the process).
The interior, which featured ersatz tomb reliefs and hieroglyphs, echoed this contraction of space and time between ancient Egypt and the modern West. From within and without, the views affirmed notions of a cultural mainstream flowing from the pharaohs to ourselves. The unsubtle message was that a common bond of tradition joined Egypt and the United States to a degree unmatched by the Soviet ''East.''
The Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Hiltons embodied a different political agenda. Both were explicitly Zionist in ambition. Designed by Ya'acov Rechter, they were rooted in the intention to build a European country in an Eastern region. Nice work if you can get it, and Israel's architects had been getting it well before the country's creation in 1948.
Tel Aviv, in particular, was an experimental ground for the first generation of architects to emigrate from Europe to Palestine. In the 1930's, it became the world's most complete urban realization of ideas developed at the Bauhaus under the direction of Walter Gropius.
In hindsight, it is clear that the European origins of modern architecture would be grounds for conflict with local customs. But the architects of the time believed that modern architecture was inherently capable of transcending, if not precisely bridging, the gulfs that separated cultures.
The ambition may have been utopian, but European architects had already succeeded in transforming utopian dreams into realized buildings. After World War II, they had produced the templates for social housing in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Britain and other nations. That aesthetic, conventionally associated with the Bauhaus, had also been embraced by wealthy patrons. Modern architecture had bridged the social classes, in other words. Why couldn't it narrow the gaps between cultural traditions?
With structures of rough exposed concrete and sharply geometric balconies and windows, Rechter's Brutalist Hilton hotels reflected the influence of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. Glass was less conspicuous. Intended to attain greater harmony with the landscape and ancient building traditions, the concrete also conveyed the impression of fortresses under siege.
Those who have actually stayed in a Hilton discover soon enough that the fortress appearance is deceptive. The function of the design is not to keep people out but to prevent those who are in from leaving. Good guests should stay within the grounds and spend their dollars there.
I first encountered this strategy 30 years ago during a stay at what was then the Kahala Hilton in Honolulu. Situated in a compound outside Honolulu, the Kahala was surrounded by a golf course, gardens and artificial lagoons in which porpoises leapt and plunged in synchronized routines. There was a Polynesian floor show.
Chandeliers made of beach glass hung in the huge lobby, which also came furnished with a hostess, an attractive woman dressed in a long flowered gown, a variation on the muumuu. Since this was my first visit to Hawaii, I wanted to see something besides the hotel -- something of Hawaii, in fact.
''But this is Hawaii,'' the hostess said. ''This is the best of Hawaii.''
''I mean, the real Hawaii.''
''But this is the real Hawaii. We have everything here. Would you like to go to our luau? There is no other Hawaii.''
I retreated, so confused that I would have believed the hostess had she continued further in this surreal vein: ''There is no real Hawaii. There is no Hawaii. * ''What idiot went to the Kahala Hilton for reality, anyhow? Or to Hawaii, for that matter? You want authenticity? Go home!
Hawaii, the lady tried to tell me, is a state of mind. So are Istanbul, Athens, Cairo and the other cities that came to be dominated by Hilton's out-of-scale dream palaces. The emotional interior, the inner world, is the true foreign land. But this, of course, more nearly resembles the psychology of the prison than of the traditional traveler. Alcatraz would make a fine resort, too, if they let Philippe Starck do it over with billowing white curtains.
And is it not true that boutique hotels are Hilton's postmodern equivalent? Hotels like the ones Starck has designed have become icons in the era of globalization. This era has intensified a struggle that has been going on since the end of World War II: a culture war between the creative classes clustered in older urban centers and the consumer-based lifestyle of the suburbs. Boutique hotels have become our embassies of urbanity. Forget the United Nations. What we need now is a League of Cities: a Secretariat of Cosmopolitan Style.
Photos: Conrad Hilton's hotels in Tel Aviv, top left, and Jerusalem (now a Holiday Inn), top right. Below, the marriage of Hilton and Zsa Zsa Gabor embodied the jet-set dream. (Gilian Laub for The New York Times; Bottom: Globe Photos); The Nile Hilton in Cairo was an effort to showcase the advantages of capitalism in a newly independent country. (BETTMANN/CORBIS)