I had a flashback last Tuesday while listening to IHG Hotels & Resorts’ conference for its first-half 2021 earnings, in which executives seemed happy at the progress the firm has made during the first six months of this odd year.

CEO Keith Barr and Chief Financial Officer Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson mentioned a few properties the Denham, England-based hotel firm had opened, and I looked online for a few others, just to see what IHG had been up to in the way of openings and signings.

One hotel jumped out at me: the Crowne Plaza Albany-The Desmond Hotel, in New York’s state capital. The 323-room property reopened on April 21 following a complete renovation, with the corresponding news release stating the hotel has provided a “unique guest experience since 1974. … The hotel is now entirely transformed to meet the evolving needs of modern business travelers and leisure guests.”

I do not doubt that.

I stayed there once, in 1997, and it was just about the oddest place I had seen. This no doubt came from the fact that I was a Brit living in the U.S. who had no interest in shopping malls but lots of interest in hiking, natural history and running.

The Desmond — as it was named then — had all its rooms behind fake shop doors, all of which faced into a central lobby full of plants, pools and restaurants. At least that is my memory, and I had never seen anything like it.

John K. Desmond, Jr., the original developer and owner, liked planes, and aviation motifs dotted the property, which today remains in the ownership and management of his family.

The flashback made me wonder if I’d be able to remember what I saw of hotels if they categorically changed their style.

Hotels constantly change management, brand and design, so maybe it takes an iconic, or, in this case, a strange aspect for them to burrow into the memory.

In Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 movie “Mystery Train,” a pair of Japanese tourists visit Memphis, and one of them takes photographs of his hotel rooms, and photographs of nothing else, as he said it was the only part of his trip he would never remember.

Similarly, the first boutique hotel I stayed in was the Kimpton Helix in Washington, D.C. Kimpton is a brand now owned by IHG, but at the time I stayed there it was but a growing independent chain.

The Helix at one time changed its name to the Kimpton Mason & Rook, but now it is much more plainly named Viceroy Washington, D.C.

I cannot remember the room, but the thing I remember was walking through the front door to see a sign protected by light on its lobby carpet saying “This is the best 15 minutes of your life.” I thought to myself “I doubt it,” and hoping the 15 minutes did not refer to the time it would take check-in staff to give me my key, not that I could immediately find any check-in staff.

Another hotel I remember for a similar reason, and also one that, too, has disappeared, is The Stanhope Park Hyatt New York, which stood immediately opposite the Metropolitan Museum.

I had a voucher for a one-night stay at any Hyatt hotel, and on a whim I decided I would pack a small suitcase, wander across Central Park from my Upper West Side home, check in, go to the museum, find a nice restaurant and generally have a vacation in a city I know very well.

The history of that hotel, and the building it sits in, is very well-chronicled. Now condos, and also with a dull name, 995 Fifth Avenue, real estate broker Sotheby’s currently is listing a six-bedroom, seven-bathroom apartment there for $50 million.

Built in the mid-1920s, the building was originally a hotel, the Stanhope, and Hyatt took over ownership in 1999.

I forget what year I stayed there. It must have been in 2003 or 2004, and it had to have been before Jan. 13, 2005, when it ceased to be a hotel.

I remember from there that the check-in person commented that I had not come from far. He did this as though it was a humorous remark, and I took it as such, although I thought that perhaps such a comment also was not particularly tactful.

My memory of The Desmond back in the mid- to late 1990s was that it was just plan tacky, but I might be in the minority in regard to this viewpoint.

One of my former editor in chiefs, Steven Gordon of STAR Service — a publication that provided in-depth descriptions of hotels for the use by travel agents — was brilliant in that he could remember every hotel, ever. Its name now, its former name, its former name five times removed, the names of general managers going back two decades, and so on.

He’d probably remember what was on the site before The Desmond came along, regardless of whether it was a hotel then.

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