Larry Mantle meets Eloise at the Ambassador

Memorial Day's "Airtalk with Larry Mantle" on KPCC-FM (89.3) will be a prerecorded show on historic preservation from the ghostly Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire, featuring charming stories about growing up there shared by the "Eloise" of the Ambassador. Her grandfather was the manager and she hung out with the musicians and stars who filled the hotel's Coconut Grove nightclub. The Ambassador was L.A.'s first resort hotel, a celebrity playground in the 20s and 30s. Now owned by the school district, the Myron Hunt-designed hotel will either be adapted for use as a middle school and high school or torn down. The L.A. Conservancy has a plan for adaptive reuse. A sign of the times: all 4,000 students would come from a nine-block area around the hotel.