The Playboy Club Hotel and the Grand Geneva
Near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
In August of nineteen sixty-six, Hugh Hefner arrived at a farm field west of Lake Geneva by helicopter, wearing a hardhat printed with the Playboy rabbit logo, surrounded by women in Playboy Bunny costumes wearing evening gowns for the cameras. He set off a dynamite charge to signal the groundbreaking of the Playboy Club Hotel, the first Playboy resort property to open in the United States. Hefner had purchased two farms totaling roughly thirteen hundred acres and hired architects to design seven interconnected buildings in a style inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School.
The resort opened in May of nineteen sixty-eight and included the main lodge, two golf courses, a ski chalet, a fitness center, tennis courts, and a building for staff that employees called the Bunny Dorm. Performers at the club included Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Liza Minnelli, and Sonny and Cher. The property operated as a Playboy Club until nineteen eighty-two, when the company evaluated its resort business and decided to sell.
The Marcus Corporation purchased the former Playboy property for four million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and eventually reopened it as the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, the name it carries today. The original Prairie-style architecture survives, the two golf courses remain open, and the thirteen hundred acres of grounds are intact. The resort is one of the largest conference and hospitality destinations in Wisconsin.
The bunny motif is mostly gone, though the building shapes remember what this place once was.
