the years, such as Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, King Edward VII, and the couturier Coco Chanel, who made the Ritz her home for more than thirty years. Many of the suites in the hotel are named after their famous patrons. Hemingway once said, "When in Paris the only reason not to stay at the Ritz is if you can't afford it". In 1904 and 1908, the Ritz garden café was painted by the Swiss artist, Pierre-Georges Jeanniot. Proust wrote parts of Remembrance of Things Past here from around 1909. The building was extended in 1910, and César Ritz died in 1918, succeeded by his son, Charles Ritz. Queen Marie of Romania stayed at the Ritz Hotel with her two eldest daughters, Elisabeth (of Greece) and Maria (of Yugoslavia) in 1919 while campaigning for Greater Romania at the Paris Peace Conference. Many other prominent royal figures and heads of state slept and dined at the hotel over the years. Edward VII reportedly once got stuck in a too-narrow bathtub with his lover at the hotel. August Escoffier died in 1935. After the death of Charles Ritz in 1976, the hotel went into a period of slow decline. As it lost its luster, its clientele diminished, and for the first time in its existence, it began to lose money. It was rescued, however, in 1979 by Egyptian businessman, Mohamed Al-Fayed, who purchased the hotel for $20 million and installed a new managing director, Frank Klein. Klein, in turn, put Guy Legay, the former chief of the three-star Ledoyen, in charge of the kitchen. Al-Fayed renovated it completely over several years without stopping its operation; this was achieved by annexing two townhouses, joined by an arcade with many of Paris's leading boutiques. The renovation of the hotel was headed by the architect Bernard Gaucherel from 1980 to 1987. The entire ten-year renovation cost a total of $250 million. The restaurants were given a new look, and a swimming pool, health club, and spas were created in the basement. The Little Bar was renamed the Hemingway Bar. In 1988, the Ritz-Escoffier School of French Gastronomy was established in honour of Auguste Escoffier. On 1 August 2012, the Ritz closed for the first time in its history for an extensive restoration. It was scheduled to reopen in late 2015, but this date was later changed to March 2016. At 07:00 local time