American Hotel Amsterdam

American Hotel in Amsterdam owes its name to Corneluis Adidus Anne Steinigeweg, a splendid Dutch architect fascinated by the American hotel architecture of the 19th century. In 1882 he built a big neo-gothic hotel at the Leidseplein. The hotel had Wild West landscapes on the walls, bronze American Eagles, and wooden figures of Indians all over the place. Apparently few people shared the architect’s fascination with Americana, and eighteen years later the whole hotel was taken down. The new American Hotel, completed in 1902, this time in then fashionable Art Nouveau style, went up in its stead. Its architects Willem Kromhout and H.G. Jansen created a landmark building, full of ideas, its elegance still astonishing today . Only a plaque on its wall and the name of one of its dining rooms, the Steinigeweg Room, recall the old American Hotel.

The new American Hotel, with its turrets and complicated brickwork on the outside and crafted interior inside, influenced Dutch architecture for almost half of a century. Today the American Hotel is a convenient place to stay because of its location at the back of the Leidseplein, near the Vondelpark. Thoroughly modernized inside in the 1980’s, the American Hotel has kept its ground floor Art Deco café unchanged, visible from Leidseplein Square, busy as it was a century ago.

Traditionally the Café Americain is where Amsterdam writers, actors, and musicians meet. Its richly decorated interiors, with murals inspired by the Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream", dark wood furniture and big yellow Art Deco lamps. Its low lit reading tables with daily newspapers and magazines help to recreate its original, unique atmosphere. Café Americain serves lunch and dinner, and each Sunday a jazz brunch. A Wi-Fi internet area.

While the Café Americain remains At Deco, all rooms of the American Hotel have been modernized. Some pieces of its historic furniture are now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, but the new hotel interiors are convenient and cozy. Its 174 rooms are large and quiet. It has several private dining rooms, each of them differently decorated. It also has a sauna, a fitness room, and its own canal boat terminal, and so among its dining choices it offers dinner on board a canal ship.

The American Hotel is located in the direct proximity of the best museums in Amsterdam, as well as the most elegant shopping street in town: P.C.Hooftstraat. It is the place of choice to stay for tourists as well as for a business traveler.