In Twin Peaks Season 3 on Showtime, Gordon Cole’s FBI team stay at a hotel in Buckhorn, South Dakota. The hotel’s exterior was shot in southern California, while several interior scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles Athletic Club in downtown LA. This article takes a closer look at the hotel’s exterior as seen in Parts 10, 12, 14 and 16.
WHERE IS THE HOTEL EXTERIOR IN BUCKHORN, SOUTH DAKOTA LOCATED?
The Mayfair Hotel is actually an apartment complex located at 115 East Third Street, in Pomona, California.
According to their website, the location originally opened as the Avis Hotel in 1915, named after William M. Avis. The building was designed by the Los Angeles architectural firm of Meyer and Holler, who also built Grauman’s Chinese and Egyptian theaters and the Alex Theater in Glendale. It was completed at a cost of $65,000. Many of the hotel’s furnishings were purchased in Pomona, with Wright Brothers & Rice providing the furniture, the Orange Belt Emporium providing drapery and A.B. Avis installed the heater. There was not a room 13 in the hotel (probably due to superstition around that number).
The hotel had a soft opening on December 21, 1915, with the official grand opening on January 3, 1916. A banquet was attended that night by 195 guests and included guest speaker Frank Miller discussing “Hotels and California.”
The Pomona Daily Review published a rather humorous story from the banquet. It appears guests in attendance didn’t receive pies as they were stolen by “hoboes” in the area.
On March 2, 1927, it was announced that Neil H. Edgar secured a ten-year lease for the Avis Hotel from Mrs. Ethel Gosnell of Los Angeles. Mr. Edgar began refurbishment of the hotel on April 5 with installation of new carpets and a new interior look. He also owned the Aztec Hotel in Monrovia (which is the town where the exterior of Donna Hayward’s house from the series was located).
In 1932, the hotel was renamed the Mayfair. According to the Progress-Bulletin in Pomona, the large neon sign was installed on the building on May 12 that year. By the time a fire condemned the building in 1990, it had become a single-occupancy hotel.
There were attempts to renovate the hotel in the 2000s but plans and deals fell apart before work could be done. Following a $3.5 Million investment, the hotel reopened as an apartment complex in fall 2012. Thank you to David Allen from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin who wrote an extensive article in 2011 about the hotel’s history.
APPEARANCES IN TWIN PEAKS
The first appearance of the hotel’s exterior is in Part 10.
A cropped shot of the building reappeared in Part 12. The same establishing shot was used twice in the episode.
The first daytime establishing shot of the building is seen in Part 14.
The scene opens with onscreen text – “Buckhorn, South Dakota” – which fades to just the building’s exterior.
The onscreen text appears to be similar to the establishing shot of “Buckhorn” first seen in Part 1. I’m unsure why it wasn’t also used in Parts 10 and 12.
The final establishing shot of the hotel is seen in Part 16. You can see O’Donovan’s in the episode image and through the car window in this location shot. It’s an American Irish pub that’s located on the ground floor.
