This coming Sunday marks the 45th anniversary of America’s first moon landing. But moon fever started well before the historic 1969 event, and Hilton Hotels was quick to float the idea of the “Lunar Hilton,” the first ever hotel to be built on the moon.
In the 1960s, Barron Hilton, president of Hilton, told both Cosmopolitan Magazine and The Wall Street Journal that he hoped to introduce the new Lunar Hilton at some point in his lifetime. He described his vision of the hotel as 100 rooms built underneath the surface of the moon, with an observation dome that allowed guests to look back at the earth.
These plans stirred up excitement and intrigue all over the world. The hotel chain even printed “reservation cards” (below), for people to put down their name and reserve an exclusive room in the lunar hotel. They received thousands of responses.
FUN FACT: References to this celestial hotel have been made in the hit TV series Mad Men as well as the classic cartoon The Jetsons. (Source: Smithsonian.com)