The Oregon daily journal., September 20, 1908, Page 33, Image 33

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PORTLANDS OREGON. - SUNDAY ' HORNING ; SEPTEMBER 2a 1901
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Unparallelecl Growtk of Luxurious
Hbstelries Makes America; Unique
uqs Among INations
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fJHlHE western multi-billionaire had
completed arrangements to , move
am undecided as to where we
ought to live, dear," he said, over his
breakfast one day. His wife, a pleasant lit.
tie woman in ' brown, viewed the change
with some concern.
"Its terribly expensive to build," she
said; "and now that you are going to settle
down well, you see, we wish to enjoy. all
the luxuries."
"Yes," he replied, munching a choice
bit of cured ham. "I'm giving up work and
I'm going to live easy. And we're going to
be jeal swell. We've made quite a little
pile out here in the wilderness, and now
we're going to settle down and live as we
should, like a king and queen eh, little
one?"
So they journeyed East and lived in
o hotel. This was not remarkable; the
number of hotel residents in America, from
New York to New Mexico, from Maine to
California, is increasing every year. The
hotel habit is one of the most wonderful
products of recent years. America is be
coming a nation of hotels.
And is it remarkable that it should
be sof Imagine the cost of having in your
private residence such innovation; Sis you
enjoy in the swell hotels! Pneumatic mail
ing tubes tn every suite, automatic dish re-
6mith shop, tinsmith shop, plumbing shop, uphol
stering shop, barber shops, a fire department, a
police force, a private detective bureau, a gro
cery warehouse, a hothouse, steam laundry,
printing office.
In the wine cellar are t. half million dollars'
worth of aged and aging wines; each year-is
spent $50,000 for linen, $57,000 for butter, $12,
000 for eggs, $42,000 for fruit, $80,000 for vege
tables, $113,000 for poultry, $200,000 for meat
and $30,000 for flowers.
And the cost of the hotels 1 . Corporations
are behind them. .In them are sunk many kings'
ransoms. In New York city, the metropolis of
hostelrics, there are invested in the Plaza Ho
tel $12,500,000; in the Belmont, $9,000,000; ia
the Ansonia houses, $4,000,000; in the Gotham
and St. Regis, $9,000,000; in the Knickerbocker,
$7,000,000; the Astor, $6,C00,006; the Breslin.
$3,000,000; the Seville, $1,000,000, and the Mar
seille, $1,000,000. , : . .
Within one year foty hotels wercnut up m
Manhattan, at a cost of $20,375,000; the follow- :
ing year the number increased to ninety, with an
investment twice as large, exceeding $40,000,000.
Talk of a booming business I
And when it comes to elegance the thought
almost awes one. How European palaces ar
suite, heated electric dumb-waiters, pneu
matic tubes to the hotel kitchen, automatic
thermostats to regulate the temperature to
your comforj, open fireplaces for wood,
silver-lined kitchen utensils, cold-air regis-
of ( Bes8borough became lachrymose when' ha
viewed the hotel situation in England. The
number of residents was falling off, hotels; were
losing money, and the increasing number tended
to make competition so keen as to eliminate all
profit. The consumption of , wine arid fod
nwjtrr for hathinv ilterrA ir free A nf Aust
movers, aerial dininr rooms, cold storare aA n,irmh nlA AUh,t ,r wnmi
for the women s furs, electrically cheated looked after as if by intuition
chafing dishes, Uark rooms for the kodqk It 'tt any wonder America is becoming
fends, long-distance telephones in every a nation of hotels?
tcrs to coot me rooms in summer, -perjumea had fallen off withiu the last ten years the re
ceipts for wine have decreased 50 per cent
O
Thr if nothing? which h& ta yt bea con
trived by man by which much htpplnesi la
produced M by arood Ukvora or ton. Dr. Johnson.
HE thing was not dreamed of in the
Arabian Isiigbta; modern times offer
something more wonderful than any of
the marvels wrought by senii in Sche-
herezade's am axing tales. ;
That is the modern hoteL
It is a wonderland fairyland of splendor.
It offers comforts many kings do not enjoy.
Its chambers art more splendid than the most
magnificent palaces of Europe. And its kitchens
offer foods such aa Lucullus and Epicurus is
their wOdest of gastronomic dreams never con
ceived. .
It has become the horns of the wealthiest
sod moat fastidious of th country. Private
individual can hsvs th;ir state dining rooms.
There is scarcely s want that cannot be gratified.
Conveniences art afforded in thess Gargantuan
dwellings that many rich men would sot install
la private horns.
And inconveniences sre obviated which are
bound to turn up, even in such well-regulsted
homes ss those of the Morgans, Rockefellers
snd Csrnegies.
It is doubtful if Solomons palace offered
such a scene ss that presented when 1000 electrio
bulbs, st s turn of a button, flash daxzlingly in .
the marvelous hall of Xumidian marble in. a
well-known New York hotel; it is hardly pos
sible that Louis XIV, in all his elegance, saw
such splendors ss the gobelin-hung chamber in
another, where there is a $10,000 bed. Even the .
Caesars, could they be -resurrected,' would un
doubtedly a up with Satonuhment st the sight
of a hotel kitchen,, fifty feet beneath a street,
where seventy-fiTs cooks, working in relays over
stoves whos fires never are'extingwahed, pre
pare offerings to the great god Appetite.
- The modern hotel turrks "lbs climax of
Iruman comfort and luxury.
A mmth or so ago, at a myelin,' of the
Gordon Hotels Ccmpacy, ia .London, th Earl
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If England presents this face of the medal,
America can show the other. Never in the his
tory of the country has hotel trade experienced
. such -a boom. Each year new hotels go up, and
each year one. finds people acr ambling for accom
modations. Hotels are no sootier opened than
they are filled. '
Comparing tho best hotels of Europe with
tbos of this country, one is struck by their in
feriority. About ten or twelve hotels in Lon
don -are recommended by guidebooks as "first
class." It .is ssscrted not one equals the best
of the "second-class" hotels in New York. Of
mere than 450 large hotel in the American me
tropolis, about 100 are first class, judged by the
highest European standards. '
New York has often been called a city of
hotels. The estimated hotel population exceeds
150.000. America, by Europeans, is of ten called
a nation of hotels. How manv persons live in American wealth, luxury, comfort and what not.
these three-to-ten-million-dollar homes it would . The modern hotel is a town nsy, a city, a
be difficult to estimate. -.But the number is in- manufacturing industry, , theater, a restaurant
creasing year by year, and New York may be re- , in itself, In one leading New York hotel srs
forded ss a gauge of the hotel business. - 750 bathrooms. Almost any time on can find
' From the Atlantio to the Pacific, and. from , .housed there 1500 guests and nearly ss maey
the boundaries of Csnada t ' the Golf of Mexico, ' ' servants, while daily as many as 10,000 persons
one will find hotels offering csnvenlencrs novel, ' csn be served in the dining balL
indfL in the history of the world. . Take tha There are in the hotel telepbo- and t1-
lesding csrsvsntaries in the various large cities, . graph offices, a machine shop, in flee trie light
and in them yoa will' find tha . apotheosis of plant, an ice plant, a blacksmith shop,, silver-
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ransacked for treasures, how the world's preciou
collections in art are scrutinised, how rare tr
tries, muity with legernl and huroria ssoc;a
tions, are secured st fbulous pricts for t !
room, how the Orient under js .s nt S
ccn-b treatment in the search for car; r i
tpetris and the heirlooms of l ur ; f : -ed
for ths rarest pecimr.s til ; a
wonckriuU nay, more ron ! rf ,) -i i ;
ing of the palaces mtrrr.:lt ' r '. r
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