The extraordinary "White Lady"
On the 1st January 1880 in Menlo Park, a small New Jersey town, a historic event as extraordinary as the first cinematic screening took place: the town's main street and library were astonishingly and instantly illuminated. The amazed witnesses of this miracle saw small glass bulbs in which glowing filaments produced a beautiful golden light. Thomas Edison's electric light bulb had just started to profoundly change the world. Soon, its production would be set up on the other side of the Atlantic, to Eindhoven in the Netherlands, by Gerrard Philips, who was incidentally a cousin of Karl Marx. The Philips business would grow over the course of the 20th century to achieve the success it knows today. The first brick workshop was replaced by a factory opened in 1931, on top of which was an enormous blue "Philips" illuminated sign, which became the emblem of the city. This factory, which was part of the adventure of the 20th century, was saved from demolition and is now considered a historic monument. It also now houses an extraordinary hotel : the Best Western Premier Art Hotel.
The hotel is above all extraordinary in its character as a place where a part of the history of the modern world and its miraculous progress was written, but also because of some of its more sombre pages in history: in July 1944, Frits Philips, Gerard's nephew, who was running the business, fled through his office window to avoid being arrested by the occupying German forces (in 1996 Israel awarded him the Yad Vashem "righteous among the nations" medal for having saved many Jews from Nazi brutality). The panoramic restaurant on the top floor of the hotel has an excellent reputation, and offers not only views over the lights of the town, but also of the world's progress in the 20th century.
The hotel is also extraordinary in its architectural individuality which gives it the appearance of a luxurious loft rather than a traditional hotel. The size of the rooms and apartments (some of which measure up to 55m² and 4 metres in height), the enormous picture windows which allow the light to flood in, and the structure of the building, which the architects decided to leave exposed, all evoke its industrial past. The creativity, the colour palette, and the quality of materials used by the designers to ensure that each room is unique, are all tasteful touches in a place primarily designed to house fully standardised activity, and above all make it captivating and completely unforgettable. The site, which was named the "White Lady", became part of a huge redevelopment project which created other distinctive spaces such as an art gallery accessed from the hotel lobby, the Grand Cafe Usine, the city library, and the Design Academy.
Finally, the Best Western Premier Art Hotel is extraordinary in the quality of amenities it offers each of its guests. The facilities not only benefit from the latest technological advances, but also from a quest for perfection in even the smallest detail. The gym is equipped to a professional level. Of course particular attention has been paid to the lighting and the result is beyond all possible expectations, combining creativity and complete anticipation of the needs of the guests wherever they are. Wasn't the first Philips slogan at the beginning of the 20th century "We have a lamp for every application"? Every element, from the shower fittings to the sofas in the rooms, via the televisions and the coffee machines, has been carefully selected to exceed the expectations of the exacting travellers visiting the hotel. While shaving, turning on a light, watching the television, listening to the radio or a CD, using the in-room iron, or enjoying a coffee from the machine, each hotel guest benefits from the technological and scientific advances developed by Philips engineers whose laboratories were within the very same walls right up until the end of the 20th century. By combining exemplary facilities with a design full of bright ideas, and often a little poetry, and by magnificently conveying its unique history, the Best Western Premier Art Hotel has without doubt been able to bring back to daily modern life something truly extraordinary in nature, despite no one today being amazed by instant light at the touch of a button. This hotel is certainly the only one in the world that could hope to do so.
| Best Western Premier Art Hotel Eindhoven |
| Lichttoren 22, Eindhoven, Netherlands - 5611 BJ |
| Phone: +31 10 279 4111 Fax: +31 33 465 5066 |
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