By Sultan Cogalan
LONDON (AA) - A Turkish business group in London leased and restored a historic library building from the early 1900s, turning it into a boutique hotel with a library and culinary arts school.
Following a decade-long restoration project that involved a substantial financial investment, the hotel opened its doors to guests last year.
Each hotel room is named after 75 influential Turkish and foreign figures who have made noteworthy contributions to various fields such as literature, culture, art, science, philosophy, and politics.
Onder Sahan, the chairman of the Limehouse Library Hotel, told Anadolu that they leased the historical library, which had been idle since 2003, from the municipality for 200 years and opened it as a boutique hotel last year.
Sahan said they had long thought and made preparations to make the historical library a suitable project for its mission.
"Libraries are losing their former appeal. People used to go to libraries more for reading, research, and self-reflection, but advancements in communication technologies have diminished the functions of libraries as buildings.
"So, we wanted the guests staying in our hotel to breathe in the atmosphere of a library and experience the feeling of being together with the individuals who have shaped humanity, who have become common values of humanity, and who have left a mark in literature, art, science, politics, and philosophy. We wanted them to have the opportunity to get to know the heroes of these stories more closely and have a pleasant time,” Sahan said.
“Since this place used to be a library in the past, we decided that it should be a project that carries the names that contribute value to this world into the future. In this regard, we created a long list. We conducted research on the stories and contributions of these individuals to the world.
"Many people, including our partners Dervis Aslan, Muzaffer Cicek, Haci and Ahmet Akdogan, contributed to the emergence of this story. We call it a boutique hotel with 75 rooms, but it is beyond the boutique category. We identified many names during the preparation process, but due to spatial constraints, we had to select 75 names. Creating the concept was enjoyable but also long and exhausting. Is Bankasi provided great support for the completion of the project. I thank everyone who contributed,” he added.
Sahan mentioned that the design and interior architecture applications, as well as the furniture and objects that tell the stories of the personalities for whom the rooms are named, allow the guests at the hotel to see them up close and be informed through books and anecdotes.
He pointed out that there is a special library in a part of the hotel, where guests have the opportunity to work and read.
Sahan expressed the joy of reopening the doors of a library, emphasizing that their decision to include a culinary arts academy within the Limehouse Library Hotel was based on the belief that education requires continuity.
Sahan also mentioned his personal interest in reading and writing, stating that in 2005, they built a primary school in the Gulluce village of the Sarikamıs district of Türkiye's eastern Kars province, and they opened a non-profit college in London called Docklands Academy in 2011.
Sahan pointed out that the school in London enables many young people from different countries to develop and allows Turkish children living in the UK to receive Turkish education.
"The continuity of the world depends on the emergence of more educated individuals. I am trying to support education and culture to the best of my ability."
Ozlem Darcan, the founding assistant of the hotel, said the hotel, located in Limehouse, one of the popular areas of London, offers a new understanding in accommodation and makes significant contributions to the city's tourism.
"Limehouse Library Hotel cannot be described solely as a boutique hotel, it is an accommodation facility that goes beyond the hotel with its content,” Darcan said.
Mehmet Dogulu, the hotel's management consultant, mentioned that Limehouse Library Hotel also houses a culinary arts school, where meals suitable for the hotel's concept are prepared, and they strive to offer tastes related to Anatolian and Mediterranean cuisine, as well as the countries where the personalities whose names are preserved in the hotel lived.
Glem Pires, a guest at the hotel, said that when she visited the hotel she found online, she noticed that it was much more beautiful and different from the images on the internet and social media.
Pires, who came to London as a tourist and will stay for a week, said she was very impressed by the hotel's cultural richness and that she would recommend it to her friends.
The couple Silke Wechsler from Germany and David Zelliveger from Switzerland also expressed their satisfaction with staying in a library-themed hotel and found its design impressive.
The hotel pays homage to numerous distinguished personalities whose legacies are honored within its premises. These include Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Türkiye, as well as Mahatma Gandhi, the political and spiritual figurehead of India's independence movement.
Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, esteemed British authors, share the spotlight with the Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes, along with Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Nazim Hikmet, Yasar Kemal, and Zulfu Livaneli that represent the rich tradition of Russian and Turkish literature.
Mevlana, Haji Bektash Veli, Yunus Emre, and Pir Sultan Abdal, symbolizing Islamic philosophy and folk literature, while Socrates, Galileo Galilei, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mimar Sinan, and Omar Khayyam, the esteemed individuals from ancient Greece, Italy, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire, are others whose memories are cherished in the hotel.
The hotel offers the guests staying in the rooms named after these individuals a trip through time with the help of interior design, furniture, objects, books, and multimedia applications that share their stories and legacies.
In the hotel, examples of the rich cultural treasures of Anatolia and Mesopotamia are also narrated through reliefs and paintings, and guests from different countries are introduced to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Legend of Shahmaran, traditional shadow play Karagoz and Hacivat, and satirist Nasreddin Hodja in separate rooms, with specially prepared objects and visuals.
*Writing by Esra Tekin in Istanbul