[17] In 1926, Fred Horowitz,[18] a prominent Los Angeles attorney, chose the site at Marmont Lane and Sunset Boulevard to construct an apartment building.

In 1927, Horowitz commissioned his brother-in-law, European-trained architect Arnold A. Weitzman, to design the seven-story, L-shaped building based on his photos from France.

Local newspapers described the Chateau as "Los Angeles's newest, finest and most exclusive apartment house […] superbly situated, close enough to active businesses to be accessible and far enough away to ensure quiet and privacy."

[20] Due to the high rents and inability to keep tenants for long-term commitments during the Great Depression, Horowitz sold the apartment building in 1931 to Albert E. Smith, co-founder of Vitagraph Studios, for $750,000 in cash (equivalent to $15,030,000 in 2023).

[24] From about 1942 to 1963 the Chateau was owned by Erwin Brettauer,[25] a German banker who had funded films in Weimar Germany, and was noted for allowing Black guests, breaking the long-standing color line in Hollywood and Beverly Hills hotels.

[6] After sitting on the market for two years, the hotel was sold in 1975 to Raymond R. Sarlot and Karl Kantarjian of Sarlot-Kantarjian, a real estate development firm, for $1.1 million.

[1][9] In The New York Times, writer Quentin Crisp praised the Chateau's "avoiding undue modernization and stayed deliberately in the romantic past.

[citation needed] On July 28, 2020, the Chateau Marmont announced plans to convert to a members-only hotel, although at least one restaurant would remain open to the public.

[41][42] Balazs had spent five years courting the restaurateur, Reika Alexander of New York City's EN Japanese Brasserie.

[43] Anthony Bourdain,[44] Johnny Depp, Tim Burton,[43] Death Grips,[45] F. Scott Fitzgerald,[43] Anthony Kiedis,[46] Annie Leibovitz,[43] Courtney Love, Lana Del Rey,[4] Jay McInerney,[43] Helmut Newton,[43] Dorothy Parker,[43] Nicholas Ray,[47] Terry Richardson,[48] Hunter S. Thompson,[43] and Bruce Weber,[43] among others, have produced work at the hotel.

[58] The Chateau is featured—often as a setting—in many books, including Martin Amis's Money (1984) (as the Vraimont),[59] Eve Babitz's Eve's Hollywood (1974)[60] and Slow Days, Fast Company (1977),[61] James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere (1988),[62] Dominick Dunne's An Inconvenient Woman (1990)[63] and Another City, Not My Own (1997),[64] Charles Bukowski's Hollywood (1989),[65] Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble (2007),[66] Lauren Weisberger's Last Night at Chateau Marmont (2010),[67] and Michael Connelly's The Drop (2011).

[81] The hotel's stationery has featured in work by artists André,[82] Gary Baseman,[83] Robert Gober,[7] Martin Kippenberger,[7] and Claes Oldenburg,[7] among others.

[85][86] Photographer Helmut Newton died on January 23, 2004, after suffering a heart attack and crashing his car when pulling out of the driveway.