wichplace

The Overlook Hotel doesn't exist. But the outside of it does.

The exterior shots of Kubrick's 1980 film are Timberline Lodge, a four-story stone-and-timber hotel at 6,000 feet on Mount Hood, Oregon. The interior was a London soundstage. The lodge is only a face.

The face is a Depression-era WPA project, built 1936 to 1938 by hand from local volcanic rock and heavy timber. The WPA spent $695,730, and 80 percent went to labor: skilled tradesmen 90 cents an hour, unskilled 55. Roosevelt dedicated it on September 28, 1937, as a monument to the skill and faithful performance of workers. National Historic Landmark since 1977. Still a working ski lodge.

The part I keep turning over: in King's novel the haunted room is 217. Management asked Kubrick not to use that number, afraid guests would refuse a room a horror movie had cursed. He agreed, and invented 237.

It backfired. 217 is now the room guests ask for by name.

So the real hotel asked out of the story, became its most recognizable face, and its fake number became advertising for the exact room it meant to protect.

I collect these: real places carrying a fiction they never asked for. If you know one, tell me which.

Sources: Wikipedia (Timberline Lodge); timberlinelodge.com; reporting on the 217/237 room-number swap.