Visit The California Hotel With A National Geographic Archive Inside

By Joe Sills

A panoramic, black and white photograph of a curiously familiar airplane caught my attention. The plane was buzzing low enough over a stretch of prairie to give a human a new haircut, and the caption beneath described why. “Over flat, uninhabited stretches of country like this, Colonel Lindbergh would often drop down within a very few feet of the ground looking for some object of interest.”

The plane, of course, was the Spirit of St. Louis—the first aircraft to successfully complete a solo, nonstop flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Today, the Spirit of St. Louis is on permanent exhibit in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., a static mummy from the dawn of aviation. But in the lobby of a California hotel, Charles Lindbergh’s legendary aircraft is still very much alive.

To fly in it, you’ll need to locate Vol. LIII, No. 1 of National Geographic from January of 1928. “Seeing America with Lindbergh” encompasses nearly half of the chunky publication. The 47 illustrations and thousands of words written nearly a century ago by freelance writer Donald E. Keyhoe—a retired naval lieutenant turned science fiction author and UFO enthusiast who doubled as Lindbergh’s tour manager—rest inside of a library of around 10,000 copies of the world’s most famous travel publication, now in its 135th year, inside Berkeley, California’s Graduate Hotel.

Coincidentally, the building is located beneath Lindbergh’s flight route.

“We just had a past guest come by in April to drop off a couple hundred of them from their parents’ collection,” says Graduate Hotels Area General Manager Christine McDermott. “They wanted them to be preserved in a place they knew they would be admired.”

Admired they are. On check-in, guests at the Graduate are sometimes prompted by staff to try to locate their birth month. Up for the challenge, I miraculously pluck Vol. 172, No. 4 from the trove to find “Epilogue for Titanic” and the Netflix-relevant “North Carolina’s Outer Banks” on the front page. My partner scores “Yugoslavia,” and “Neptune: Voyager’s Last Fly-By.”

For what feels like hours, I peruse the shelves of magazines scouring the pages to check the pulse of the past. From the dawn of aviation, I am whisked into the Cold War, the emergence of AIDS, the Climate Crisis and the aftermath of countless conflicts in countries that no longer exist. I see regions of the world that feel difficult to access now—the glowing, intangible architecture of Tehran and secluded Hmong villages high atop the mountains of Laos.

Not every writer is as gonzo as Keyhoe. For every UFOologist in the bunch, there’s a Bill Garrett, the revered Vietnam War correspondent who went on to become the publication’s editor in chief, famously publishing Steve McCurry’s “Afghan girl” in 1985. The image of a young girl’s piercing green eyes set inside of a red hood is still regarded as one of the most iconic travel photos ever produced, and Garrett’s leadership helped create a platform for photojournalists as legitimate storytellers. Garrett would famously quit the publication in 1990 during a dispute over creative direction, but his legacy lives on in the catalogues of Berkeley.

By nightfall, I’ve migrated to Henry’s, the hotel’s in-house pub. In truth, Henry’s is mostly an extension of the lobby that adds tables, window seats and a traditional British bar top to the equation. It’s a convenient spot to saunter in with another handful of magazines, grab a pint and keep the inquisition going. The staff is chipper and downright friendly. They have no clue that I’m feeling low after a Zoom meeting with National Geographic Expeditions confirms I will not be as fortunate as McCurry, Garrett or Keyhoe for now. But the sting of this most recent travel writing rejection is blunted by the decades of successful storytelling in front of me. “I can write this s***,” I blurt to my partner over our second pint. “I mean, it’s all fantastic writing, but I can do it.”

For now, I’m writing about other people’s writing and the notoriety that this collection is beginning to attract. Many of them are dead. But among the living, I learn that the nearby luminescent wall made of 10,000 spines worth of Pantone 115 C yellow bindings is not the only National Geographic archive in the United States. There’s another—in the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C. But that’s more than 2,500 miles away; and surely there’s no more relaxed spot to spend a day behind the keyboard or a night at the bar perusing the pages of history than Berkeley.

In Berkeley, the archive is about 30 yards from an omnipresent throng of pullover-clad college students grabbing a seven dollar slice at Artichoke Basille’s Pizza. The Margherita with plum tomato and basil there comes with a side of “Here ya go. Now f*** off” that one might have a difficult time conjuring at LeDeSales, the French restaurant located across the street from the society’s bookshelves in D.C. And while you might be able to casually stroll to The White House from the East Coast enclave; on the West Coast, a five-minute walk puts you inside the Dungeons and Dragons-lined halls of Games of Berkeley where chill vibes, miniature dragons and dice await.

Just as this archive is not a one-off, neither is its host hotel. The Graduate Berkeley is part of a network of hotels all based around college campuses across the country. Many of them, I’m told, feature unique lobby installations of their own. In Eugene, Oregon, a vintage Nike shoe collection welcomes guests with dozens of old school waffle racers. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, a collection of vintage, picker-style Americana signs await. In Seattle, two stories of retired amplifiers pay homage to the city’s rock scene. And in New York, a fully-fledged, 25,000-book library unfurls.

The situation in California feels unique, though. Because guests have become so passionate that they’re donating their personal collections to what might otherwise be a faceless brand.

“I think people feel strongly because of the nostalgia that National Geographic invokes,” adds McDermott. “Most people can immediately recognize that pantone color because they grew up flipping through its pages. Almost every person guesses right when they ask if those are National Geographic magazines lining the wall. Storytelling and nostalgia are at the core of each Graduate, so to be able to evoke such a strong emotional response beginning the moment our guests check in, means we’ve truly succeeded.”

Via Forbes