The interior of the building is even more ornate than the exterior, featuring shopping arcades, Italian-made ceilings and column capitals, drinking fountain by Ernest A. Batchelder, marble floors by Georgia Marble Company of Georgia Pink and Vermont Verde Antique marble a wrought iron ballistrude and a central mezzanine, etc.
His life took a turn in 1909 when, behind his house overlooking the Arroyo Seco, he built a kiln and entered the business of creating hand-crafted art tiles.
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The current resident, Dr. Robert Winter, wrote the definitive Batchelder history, Batchelder Tilemaker (Balcony Press, 1999, 112 pp, ISBN 1-890449-03-2).
The entry includes a tower staircase and Batchelder tile risers, and there are arched doorways, a formal dining room, butler's pantry, dormer windows, and fireplaces in the living room and masterbedroom.
The building was sold in 1998 to the Palladium Theater, which renovated it for its own use, while preserving as much as possible of the interior, including the 1926 Skinner organ and the magnificent Arts and Crafts style art titlework which came from the Los Angeles studios of famed tilemaker Ernest A. Batchelder.
Batchelder tiles are used extensively in the hotel and lobby.
Ernest Hemingway | Ernest Shackleton | Ernest Borgnine | Ernest Tubb | Ernest Rutherford | Ernest Renan | Ernest Chausson | Ernest Bloch | Ernest Bevin | Ernest | Ernest George | Ernest Gruening | Ernest Dowson | Ernest Bai Koroma | Ernest Thompson Seton | Ernest Hollings | William Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Weimar | John Ernest | Ernest Thayer | Ernest Jones | Ernest Giles | Ernest Gellner | Ernest Fenollosa | Ernest Augustus I of Hanover | Ernest Augustus I, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach | Reginald Ernest Moreau | Ernest Torrence | Ernest Nagel | Ernest Marples | Ernest L. Wilkinson |
On June 12, 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated Batchelder to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to the seat vacated by Frederick Pierce Lively.
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Batchelder briefly taught English and had a private legal practice from 1971 to 1983 in Medina, Ohio, near Cleveland.
During his college years, Ernest pastored the Webster Circuit of the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, of which he became a Member in Full Connection and was ordained Elder in 1949.
After the war, Gross rejoined the State Department, serving as Legal Adviser of the Department of State and as deputy to the Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas (Gen. John H. Hilldring, then, from 1947, Charles E. Saltzman).
He served in World War I and was shot down near Verdun, France on 16 September 1918, and died of his wounds as a prisoner of war a few days later.
The design was supervised by Park Service Chief Architect Thomas Chalmers Vint, and site selection and development were undertaken by Park Service landscape architect Ernest A. Davidson.