top of page
Fairmont Copley Hotel Decoration

Trompe L’Oeil Architecture

The Fairmont Copley Hotel, located in the heart of Copley Plaza, is one of Boston’s most historic and prestigious hotels. The street facades are decorated with magnificent turn-of-the-century architectural stonework. The hotel occupies an entire city block, necessitating the introduction of large exterior courtyards to bring light to the hotel suites. These courtyard walls were originally built with unadorned windows following the façade, with wide expanses of blank stucco.

Visionary Regional Fairmont Hotel Manager Paul Tormey commissioned Joshua Winer to design and create decorative painted trompe l’oeil architecture surrounding all these interior windows around two massive 7 story courtyards. We started by creating an on-site sample as a Proof-of-Concept, measuring 25 feet wide by 45 feet tall. The finished sample shows the success of this work, and is the basis for continuing the work on more than 10,000 square feet of wall surface.

The photo series shows our samples, staging, and work on site, with the modern Hancock Tower right behind us.

 

bottom of page