“El Convento” Hotel

hotel-el-con­ven­to

Con­tin­u­ing down Cristo street the next build­ing on your right is the famous Hotel El Con­ven­to.  Inau­gu­rat­ed in 1651 as the Monastery of our Lady Car­men of San José, the build­ing served as a con­vent for 252 years, until it was closed by the Arch­bish­op of San Juan on Decem­ber 9, 1903.  From then on the build­ing remained vacant for ten years and was sold in 1913 for $151 to the Catholic Church.

Dur­ing the next 46 years the build­ing went from bad to worse, and served as a depart­ment store, a dance hall and even a fleabag hotel, that had no water, elec­tric­i­ty or san­i­tary facil­i­ties.  In 1957 city offi­cials con­sid­ered demol­ish­ing the struc­ture to build a bad­ly need­ed park­ing facility..

Dur­ing that same year, the city of San Juan began an urban renew­al pro­gram titled “Oper­a­tion Boot­strap”, under the guid­ance of a then young and enter­pris­ing exec­u­tive by the name of Ricar­do Ale­gría.  In 1959, the build­ing was sold to Robert Fred­er­ic Wool­worth, heir to the Wool­worth for­tune, for $250,000 to be trans­formed into a deluxe hotel that was instru­men­tal in pro­pelling busi­ness and tourism in the old city.

The Wool­worth fam­i­ly spared no expense to trans­form the dilap­i­dat­ed build­ing into the crown jew­el of their hotel empire.  On Jan­u­ary 27, 1962 El Con­ven­to opened its doors and instant­ly became the most talked about hotel in the Caribbean.  Rather than fol­low­ing the glitzy mod­el of its Con­da­do and Isla Verde coun­ter­parts, El Con­ven­to fol­lowed a more Euro­pean upscale mod­el, with exquis­ite din­ing, posh dec­o­ra­tion and lux­u­ry in every detail.  It’s no won­der that it became an instant suc­cess known among the well to do as the “home of the beau­ti­ful people”.

But luck was about to run out for El Con­ven­to as the Wool­worth fam­i­ly decid­ed to get out of the hotel busi­ness.  In 1971, the hotel was returned as a “gift” to the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico in lieu of tax­es owed.

Dur­ing the next 24 years the hotel remained in gov­ern­ment hands and under­went sev­er­al admin­is­tra­tions with vary­ing lev­els of suc­cess.  In 1995 the hotel was sold to a group of San Juan exec­u­tives, who imme­di­ate­ly closed it for renovation.

In Jan­u­ary, 1997 the hotel reopened its doors and imme­di­ate­ly made the Conde Nast Trav­el­er list of the 25 best hotels in the world.  The build­ing is list­ed as a nation­al his­toric land­mark and is the only hotel in Puer­to Rico to belong to the His­toric Hotels of America.

Get Directions

From 

To 

Add Waypoint 

For  Driving Walking Transit Bicycling

show options  hide options 

Avoid Tolls  Avoid Highways  Avoid Ferries 

Print directions  Reset directions 

Fetch­ing directions.…..

Reset direc­tions
Print direc­tions