It’s a Thursday afternoon in May, shortly before 4:00 pm. My husband drives up and parks in front of 530 William Penn Place in the bustling city of Pittsburgh. We are greeted by a courteous and uniformed valet attendant who eagerly unloads our bags from the car. As my husband and the attendant chat about the parking particulars, I step onto the sidewalk. As best I can, I gaze up to view The Omni William Penn Hotel.

With its trio of towers standing over twenty floors high, it’s virtually impossible to see the entire building from where I stand. I lean back and attempt it anyway. Passers-by hurriedly walk about the pavement dodging me from both directions as though spectators such as myself are an everyday occurrence.

I admire the tiled and lighted marquee that is crowned with an iron rail of fan-hatted faces and scrolls. On the front, facing the street, is a pattern of cameo silhouettes and griffin-like creatures that stretch out majestically on each side of the gold gothic script that identifies this city’s grande dame hotel.

“You coming?”

My drifting thoughts are interrupted as I follow behind my husband through the hotel’s revolving door. Occupying two of the four rotating wings, with just one push and a few small steps, it’s as if we’ve stepped back in time. Entering the foyer, the faint sound of jazz music emerges as we follow the steps up towards hotel registration.

I reach the top of the stairs and marvel. The lobby is spectacular. Three grand crystal chandeliers line the center of the ornate embellished ceiling. The tasseled trimmed draperies overlap each statuesque window, dressing them with perfect and graceful swags.

Scattered throughout the lobby are intimate settee areas of wingback chairs, loveseats, and coffee tables. A teal plush lobby sofa with chairs and cocktail tables is positioned under the middle chandelier. A grand piano sits across the room’s far corner while green palms are placed about. I have entered The Palm Court Lobby. A hotel staff member stands in a crisp white shirt and black pants. His hands are folded as he proudly smiles and surveys the area, ready to offer up his service in an instant.

I too, survey the area. Reflections from the towering arched windows illuminate the space with an elegant golden glow of decades long past. The music enters into a smooth jazz instrumental piece. It grows louder as a woodwind solo rings out above the melody. This is my personal introduction to the magnificent place known as Omni’s William Penn Hotel.

“We have to check in!” my husband says, hesitating as he waits for me before approaching the hotel’s front desk. Once again, I follow behind.

Our room is on the eighth floor, The William Penn Suite. Upon entering, I notice a bottle of pinot noir, two glasses, and an envelope. The satin finish card shows a view of downtown Pittsburgh, inside a welcome message from Bob Page, Director of Sales and Marketing. I am to meet him at 8:00 am in The Terrance Room for breakfast; from there, Bob will give me the grand tour of Omni’s William Penn Hotel.

The William Penn Suite is beyond my expectations. The quarters include a kitchen, a formal dining room, a living room with a bar and coffee area, a spacious master bedroom with a king bed and adjoining bath, and a sitting area with a writer’s desk. The window views are of downtown Pittsburgh. As I explore The William Penn Suite, I find myself contemplating whether or not my schedule might allow for another night’s stay; sadly it does not.

The next morning, I arrive at The Terrace Room about fifteen minutes of eight. Located just off the lavish lobby, The Terrace Room is one of several dining options within the hotel. I approach the podium and chat with the hostess.

“I love your hotel!” I tell her, and I can see from her reaction she feels the same. I learn she’s been with the hotel for quite some time and shares with me some highlights of working at such a prestigious establishment, particularly about the extravagant weddings she hosts.

My eyes go to the mural painted on the back wall. Elaborate brocade booths rest underneath the towering arched windows. The tables dressed in white linens, the sparkling chandeliers, and crystal wall sconces make for an inviting and formal setting. The same elegance which enamored me the day before carry over into The Terrace Room.

I look at the framed history that hangs on the walls. The black and white photographs show the exact same dining room I stand in, only a century earlier.

Originally known as “The Italian Terrace,” The Terrace Room has been William Penn’s main dining room since the hotel’s Grand Opening in 1916. I glance at a matted dinner menu dated March 3rd, 1917, where an order of fresh Beluga caviar was $1.75, a Boston duckling dinner for two was $3.00, and a late-night Filet Mignon was $5.25, for an additional five cent room service delivery fee.

Bob arrives, and we are seated. The breakfast menu is impressive and I ask for his recommendations.

“You like Eggs Benedict?” Bob brags on the dining room’s Pittsburgh City Benedict, and rightfully so.

Complementing the traditional poached eggs and hollandaise, the Pittsburgh City adds shaved pastrami, provolone, cabbage slaw, tomato, toasted sourdough bread and, of course, fries (which, I am told is a “Pittsburgh thing”). It was delicious! The Terrace Room’s ambiance provides an exquisite backdrop to their award-winning cuisine, making for a superior fine-dining experience.

As my tour with Bob begins, he points out the lobby’s original plaster ceiling, which draws my attention back to those dazzling chandeliers.

Although not original to the hotel, the three crystal chandeliers are authentic antique Maria Theresa chandeliers and, prior to coming to The William Penn in 1950, hung in a casino in Cannes, France. Lowered each year by a hand crank from a tight crawlspace in the ceiling, the chandeliers come down for their annual cleaning and white-glove event just before the holidays.

“It takes three hundred and eighty-six cranks to get them to the floor level,” Bob explains. As he goes on, I can tell from the very beginning Bob Page is proud of this hotel. He takes a moment to greet a passing employee by name. The jazz music echoes through the entrance floor as I roam the halls and listen to the story of Omni’s William Penn Hotel.

The History

American industrialist and steel baron Henry Clay Frick envisioned a showplace hotel modeled after those sophisticated styles of Old-World Europe. With the help of famed architects Benno Janssen and Franklin Abbott, his Italianate-style structure became a reality and Frick’s final construction masterpiece.

Varying slightly from the original completion plans, the hotel, set for a fall opening in 1915 at an estimated cost of $5.5 million, celebrated its Grand Opening on March 9th, 1916, with a final price tag closer to $6 million.

Named after William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth, The William Penn Hotel quickly evolved into the grandiose social hub Frick hoped for and was the most modern hotel of its time.

“Twenty-five floors, one thousand rooms, all chambers with baths,” Bob reads from the original elevations. “We were one of the very first hotels with private baths in each guest room. And electric lights, as well.”

But, a certain ocean excursion could have changed everything. Among many prominent aristocrats, Henry C. Frick and his wife held maiden voyage tickets to the “Unsinkable Ship” known as the Titanic. Had Mrs. Frick not needed urgent medical attention the night before the ship’s departure, the fate of The William Penn Hotel could have very well been affected.    

In 1929, The William Penn Hotel expanded when the Grant Street Annex was built, creating six hundred additional rooms and the famed Urban Room.

Music and the Swingin’ Supper Club

“Look what that is,” Bob says as he stops at a glass showcase. He points to a round tin contraption with sixteen individual circle-ended spokes branched out around it; behind it sits an old metal fan.

“Remember Lawrence Welk?” Bob asked. “Well, he played for one of the first times in the room we just ate in, back on New Year’s Eve in 1938.

“This,” Bob continues about the peculiar device on display, “Was made for Cecil B. DeMille when he premiered a movie called The Unconquered in The Urban Room. DeMille had an ice carving of a bathtub at the premiere party, and he wanted something to enhance that ice carving. So, he went to the head of hotel maintenance at the time, and he said, ‘Hey, I need something to make bubbles.’ ” 

With a shoeshine box, a bread pan, a tuna can lid with sixteen soldered spokes, a fan from one of the guest rooms and a motor from one of the guest room clocks, the maintenance man constructed DeMille’s bubble machine.  

“And it stills works!” Bob laughs. “We’ve only had to replace the cord! You can pour bubbles in there, plug it in, and it still blows bubbles!”

Later returning to the hotel, Lawrence Welk discovered this bubble-blowing apparatus finding its bubbly effects the perfect trademark accessory to his Champagne Music theme. The rest is bubble-blowing history!

Another musician that was a staple in the early years of The William Penn Hotel was that of a young and beautiful jazz singer that went by the stage name of Dolores Reade. Her soon-to-be husband, comedian Bob Hope, often frequented the hotel’s supper club, known then as The Chatterbox, to watch her performances.

Big band jazz musician Count Basie and his orchestra were also regular acts. “The Count at the Chatterbox” was recorded live at the supper club.  

“There’s just so much,” Bob explains. “One of the first radio stations was also broadcast from the hotel. That was KDKA.”

Bob passes another co-worker, and the two exchange morning salutations.

Heritage Hall

Next, we head to Heritage Hall, a historical corridor dedicated to all sorts of William Penn Hotel relics and photographs. With enthusiasm, Bob shares stories of the hotel’s one hundred-and-six-year existence and some remarkable ways these relics found their way back to The William Penn.

“See this folio? This guy calls me as we’re getting ready to have our 100th year anniversary and goes, ‘Hey, my father was in the military, and when my mother and father got married, my father saved all his money so that he could bring my mother to stay at your hotel on their wedding night.’ He said he saved for I don’t know how long, but he wanted to bring her here because it was the nicest hotel in the city.”

The couple’s folio was dated June 17th-19th, 1944. The gentleman’s father had since passed away, so Bob invited the son and his ninety-four-year-old mother as his guests to the hotel’s anniversary dinner celebration in The Terrace Room.

“So, he brought her, and she was the cutest little thing.” Over dinner, she told Bob the story of her hotel stay so long ago. “She said, ‘I felt just like a princess!’ ”

From the original land deed to the hotel’s master clock that kept western union time to that very hotel folio, a stroll through Heritage Hall gives one a true appreciation of this stunning hotel and its hospitable history.  

The Ballrooms and Reception Halls

The hotel indeed makes one feel like royalty, especially when visiting its three breathtaking ballrooms.

The William Penn Ballroom and The Grand Ballroom were constructed as part of the original hotel, while The Urban Room came along in 1929 as the Grant Street addition’s crown jewel.

The Urban Room is the masterwork of renowned architect, illustrator, and set designer Joseph Urban. Urban’s hand-painted “Tree of Life” mural spans the ceiling and serves as the room’s striking centerpiece. With its walls of black Carrara glass and accent gold trim moldings, The Urban Room is Art Deco elegance at its finest.

Being the last remaining of three unique rooms designed by Joseph Urban, The Urban Room is registered as a Historic Landmark.

On the mezzanine level, The Lawrence Welk and The Bob and Dolores Hope reception halls are popular spaces for smaller weddings, socials, and business events. 

Special Guests

And speaking of royalties, The William Penn Hotel has its share of special guests. Even from the very beginning, with the Nixon Theatre Playhouse nearby, many leading lords and ladies often accommodated the hotel. Douglas Fairbanks, Lucille Ball, Liberace, Jimmy Stewart, Timothy Hutton, Kathleen Turner, and Jackie Gleason have been registered hotel guests.

“Every seated president since Theodore Roosevelt has visited the hotel aside from Trump.”

The hotel itself has made appearances on both the big screen and television. Films such as “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “Silence of the Lambs,” “Smart People,” “Me & Earl and the Dying Girl” were filmed on location, as well as Netflix’s “Mind Hunter” and “Rustin,” to name a few.

As I followed Bob through the hotel, the stories just kept coming. Upon Omni purchasing The William Penn Hotel in 2001, Bob has been the hotel’s Director of Sales and Marketing for twenty-one years.

“So, do you just love coming to work?” I asked him.

“I really do!” He laughs, adding, “I get to work with guys like these!”

Bob points out two more hotel employees and, again, greets them by name. They happily reciprocate, carrying on brief pleasantries as we pass by. The whole demeanor of this hotel, and those in it, has managed to keep a smile on my face the entire time.

And just when I thought my tour would be coming to a close, Bob introduces me to yet another William Penn wonderment, saving, I believe, the best for last.

        A Hidden Gem Under the Stairs

Remember that foyer where I started? The steps that led to the grand lobby? I followed Bob back down those steps and around the foyer to another set of descending stairs I hadn’t noticed when I first arrived.

“So, it was boarded up for fifty years, Valerie! You would have never known it was here! But we knew it was here. And, believe it or not, it’s right under us! Right under this stairwell!”

And there it was: The Omni William Penn Hotel’s one and only Speakeasy. And it’s not just the lounge’s moniker.

“This was an actual speakeasy,” Bob explains of the quaint little hideaway that, once discovered, served as a darkened storage area for decades.

  “So, they used to hide the speakeasies, right? If you came into the hotel, instead of coming up and into the lobby and risk being seen, they’d sneak downstairs.”

Holding true to the original décor, the walls have flocked wallpaper and lighted sconces. The original bar was even reconstructed exactly as it sat during Prohibition.

“The bar was a big mahogany bar, and we wanted to try and save it, but it was just too chipped up. But what we did was kept the outline of the base, so it still has the same historic contour of the bar, and we built a new one. This is exactly how the bar was back then.”

The Speakeasy was part of Omni’s $25 million renovations. Although they began converting it to utilize for wedding parties in the neighboring William Penn Ballroom, the finished product was just too amazing not to share.

“It turned out so nice, we thought maybe we should open it to the public. When we first opened, there was a line coming down the stairs! And it has really become popular.”

The Omni William Penn Hotel reopened The Speakeasy in 2012, and, needless to say, Omni went all out. 

“When we had The Speakeasy’s Grand Opening, we set up a police raid,” Bob laughs. “It was a lot of fun. The police came in blowing their whistles, and we had cigarette girls with trays. It was a blast!”

Bob points out a closed door in the back corner; he walks over, unlocks it, and opens it just a crack. Used as a service corridor now, the hallway once served as the escape route when the actual raids would happen.

And what makes for an authentic speakeasy experience? The booze, of course! With the help of a mixologist from Chicago, the drink menu features signature classics from the era, such as Giggle Water, The Bee’s Knees, and Tom Collins.

Much like the rest of Omni’s William Penn Hotel, The Speakeasy has a few treasures all its own.

From a locked cabinet, Bob shows me a bottle of William Penn Hotel straight rye whiskey, dated 1911. The bottle, filled with its original product, was found in another Pittsburgher’s great-grandfather’s estate. Confused by the date, as the hotel didn’t open until five years later, Bob clarifies.

“So, Frick got the idea to build the hotel in 1910. With his grandfather being a whiskey distiller, he started distilling early to get ready for it.”

Even the original green seltzer bottles from the hotel found their way back, just in time for The Speakeasy’s opening night.

Hanging in a glass and matted frame are three medicinal alcohol prescriptions.

“Don’t they look like little college degrees?” We laugh.

Back in 1926, if you suffered from, say, a reoccurring case of insomnia (and presented a convincing argument to your doctor), you might have been awarded one of these little certificates. Back then, one of these tickets was the only way to (legally) get your hands on that swig or two of nighttime whiskey that was sure to put an end to any and all sleep deprivation.

The lounge is quiet right now. But as I walk towards the front door to exit, in my mind, behind me, I hear the cacophony of music, chatter, laughter, and the clinking of glasses. I turn around only to find Bob closing and locking up that back corner door. As the door latch shuts, the lively discordant sounds in my mind fall silent.  

“If these walls could talk, huh?” Bob laughs, and I smile.

Today, The Omni William Penn Hotel is one million square feet, takes up a full city block, and has a total of twenty-six elevators. Along with its three ballrooms, five hundred and ninety-seven luxury rooms, including thirty-eight deluxe suites, thirty-eight meeting rooms, four restaurants and lounges, the hotel also offers a uniquely remodeled fitness center that was once a “men’s only” club.

And the history and stories go on and on. In all its one hundred and six years, The William Penn Hotel has maintained as a continuously operating luxury hotel, closing its doors for the first time from March of 2020 to April of 2021 due to the Covid Pandemic.

“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” ~Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

The high standard of service and exceptional hospitality Frick established way back in 1916 still exists today at The Omni William Penn Hotel, all while preserving the glitz and glamour of its iconic past.

Despite the fact I’m not a world-renowned movie star, a famed musician, or a celebrity on any level, the VIP treatment I received as a guest at Omni’s William Penn Hotel left me feeling like a million bucks!

Whether it’s business or pleasure that brings you to Pittsburgh, the historic, award-winning Omni William Penn Hotel is ready to host you!

To discover the history and hospitality of Omni’s William Penn Hotel,

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