THE SAROVA STANLEY HOTEL

The man who co-founded what is now regarded as among the best hotels in KenyaThe Sarova Stanleywas a gold trader who claimed his fame in the early 1900s after stumbling upon a huge piece of gold during the Kakamega gold rush. The year was 1904 and the gold trader called Dan Noble was the proprietor of Nairobis sole post office. Around that time, a woman called Mayence Tate had also taken up a job as a store clerk on the building that housed the post office on what was then called Victoria Street [Tom Mboya Street]. According to various web sources, Mayence devoted a lot of her time to the business and when she noticed a lack of sufficient lodging for her customers, she and Noble opened a 15-bed boarding house next door.

World Tour
They called their new hotel The Stanley. The Stanley later grew in stature after it hosted a lunchtime banquet in honour of Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip who were in Kenya as part of a world tour. They occupied bedroom suites at the Stanley for a change of clothes on way to Sagana Lodge Kenyas wedding gift to them. But as the lovebirds were making their departure from the hotel, an attendant named Margaret Stephens noticed that either Princess Elizabeth or Prince Philip had left their hat on the bed, which some superstitious folks regarded as a sinister omen of bad luck. Others thought it was a good omen, predicting that sooner or later they will return. The attendant rushed down the stairs with the hat, but was too latethe royal couple had already left. But while the prince and princess were game watching at Treetops, on the night of February 5, 1952 King Georg VI died in his sleep in London and by the following morning, news was already being flashed around the world that Princess Elizabeth had succeeded King George and would become her countrys queen. For all that happened that day, The Stanley later gained worldwide recognition because of the poignant memory of the forgotten hat and the subsequent death of a much-loved king. The structure largely remained the same until the 1959 massive reconstruction that took the hotel up to eight floors making it the largest hotel in the continent.

Hosted the Princess

The hotel, which is now referred to as the Sarova Stanley has maintained the original decor and in 2011, it added a new face to the city by constructing a canopy that has cleverly created a passage way for pedestrians in front of the hotel-creating much needed comfort for hotel visitors and pedestrians who previously had to squeeze in with vehicles on the road in search of walking space.

The development has given the 109-year-old hotel the elegance and customers, including tourists who come to share in the history can now walk out of their vehicles with much needed privacy and head straight to the hotel, an honour Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip did not enjoy. Some of the famous visitors who have stayed at The Sarova Stanley include the founder of the scouting movement Lord Baden Powel, Sean Connery [who acted as James Bond] and Frank Sinatra. It was in a Stanley Hotel bedroom during 1933/34 that writer Ernest Hemingway recuperating from amoebic dysentery and prolepses suffered on a hunting trip below Kilimanjaro thought up themes and wrote some of his most famous short stories and books, several of which mention Sarova Stanley, www.sarovahotels.com. Besides the recently constructed canopy, the rooms inside Sarova Stanley, which are also named after some of the famous visitors like Hemingway, Baden Powel and the man who signed the contract for the construction of the East African Railways, Patterson. The rooms have maintained the interior decor that attracted high class visitors in previous years and most of the past history and visits are captured in pictures that eternally hang on the walls of various conference facilities. The biggest stride towards establishment of Nairobi as Kenyas capital and The Stanley as the first hotel happened on May 30, 1899 when workmen who were laying the Mombasa-Uganda railway reached a vast plain, which author Jan Hemsing describes as: A bleak swampy stretch of soppy landscape, devoid of human habitation of any sort, the resort of thousands of wild animals, in Old Nairobi and the New Stanley Hotel.