Imperial Hotel, Tokyo least 10 structures that have been part of the Imperial Hotel, including two designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: The original Imperial Hotel opened in November 1890 on the Northeast corner of what is now the hotel property. The hotel faced roughly North, with parts of the Imperial Palace moats (no longer extant) across streets on the North and East sides of the building. The hotel was backed by key Japanese leaders, such as Foreign Minister Count Inoue Kaoru and Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi. Shibusawa and Okura Kihachiro submitted an application to form the Tokyo Hotel Co. on November 28, 1887, in
Imperial Hotel, Tokyo which had burnt down just 10 days earlier. The North wing of the new hotel and a partially completed center section opened on 2 July 1922, in time to host the reunion of the Annapolis class of 1881. At this point, estimates were that it would only take about 6 weeks to complete the hotel, and since the South wing was a mirror image of the North, Wright decided that he could leave the completion to be supervised by Arato Endo. Wright left Japan on 22 July 1922, never to return. The hotel took another 11 months to complete, and