foundation was laid near Main street for what was intended to be the
largest hotel in the United States. There it stood and there it stands
to-day (the foundation), the bricks appearing just one foot above the
ground level. These bricks enclose a space of two acres. Pullman, of
sleeping-car fame, was one of those interested, and he says that the
idea has not been entirely abandoned. The idea may yet exist but the
open lots and the brick foundation look very lonesome. Meanwhile Mr. O.
T. Johnson erected a very handsome hotel, The Westminster, on the corner
of Main and Fourth streets, which will accommodate two hundred and fifty
guests. The site of the Westminster is choice; the house contains all
the modern improvements; it is well furnished and well patronized.
As I write, in my bedroom of the Westminster Hotel, looking north I can
see, without rising from my seat, great high mountains covered with
snow. They present a most beautiful picture in this clear atmosphere,
with the sun shining upon them.
That “cranky critic,” as the New York _Hotel Gazette_ calls Max O’Rell,
would be suited at the Westminster Hotel. O’Rell complains because in
American hotels guests have regular seats; that each person upon
entering the dining-room is not allowed to sit just where he pleases.
The contrary is the rule in the hotel mentioned. A notice is prominently
posted near the elevator which reads: “Positively no seats reserved in
the dining-room.” The waiters are young, intelligent American girls of a
good class, some from New York and some from Nebraska, all uniformed in
white. They look neat and clean, are alert to take an order and quick in
serving it.
Strawberry short-cake was part of the dessert at to-day’s luncheon in
the Hotel Westminster. Fresh-picked strawberries are served every
morning for breakfast. Not a dozen or two small, hard berries, such as I
have seen served for a “portion” at hotel tables in Florida during
February, but a saucerful for each guest of large, ripe berries that
have a delicious flavor. Strawberry ice-cream was on the dinner
menu--the cream made, not from “strawberry flavoring,” but of the honest
fruit. Fresh peas and Lima beans figure on the bill, also oranges in
profusion, picked from the groves hard by.
All the way between New Orleans, La., and Los Angeles, Cal., on the
Southern Pacific railroad, you pay five to ten cents each for oranges;
as soon as you reach Los Angeles, boys with baskets of the golden fruit
swarm about the cars crying out, “Oranges, three for a nickel, six for
a dime.” If you have a little patience you will hear, “Oranges, eight
for a dime,” and if you wait till the train is about to start you can
get ten for a dime. Possibly after you are out of hearing they are sold
at ten cents a dozen.
In the cars of the Southern Pacific railroad that run between Los
Angeles and the seaport town of San Pedro appears this printed notice:
“WARNING:--Passengers are hereby warned against playing games of chance
with strangers, of betting on three card monte, strap, or other games.
You will surely be robbed if you do.”
[Illustration]
THE CALIFORNIA.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 1, 1891.
California being one of the largest of these United States, the
Californians thought that their chief city should have large hotels, so
they built in San Francisco the Baldwin House, the Lick House, the
Occidental and larger than any of these, the Palace Hotel, “larger than
any hotel in existence,” it is claimed. Whether this claim is well
founded or not, the Palace is large enough to suit the most extravagant
American ideas. It occupies three acres of ground. It has seven hundred
and fifty-five bedrooms; number of rooms all told, ten hundred and
fifteen.
But with the growth of the State and the growth of culture and good
taste, Californians and tourists from other States demanded something
above and beyond mere size; and so a few months ago was erected “The
California.” There are several “California Hotels” in San Francisco, in
fact, an old house directly opposite the California now calls itself
“The New California,” probably because the name is new. So many houses
with names near alike give trouble to the Post-office people, but the
title of the house of which I write is simply “The California.”
It is in a central and accessible part of the city--in Bush street, just
off Kearney street, which runs nearly parallel with Market, being not
far from the _Chronicle_ building, which with its great clock tower
running up hundreds of feet in the air, serves as a finger or sign-post
from many parts of the city.
The front is of cedar-colored sandstone, and with its modern, low-arched
entrances and high, round towers, is uncommonly pleasing to the eye.
There are one hundred and forty rooms in the house, and it is nine
stories high, the higher floors being most desirable. The light is
better as you ascend, and the views from the windows across the bay and
the Golden Gate are a constant delight. From my bedroom window I can
plainly see the graceful movements of the white squadron, which, with
the green hills in the far distance make a magnificent picture. The
California was erected by “an estate,” and the estate considered not the
expense. They started out with the idea to build a hotel as near
perfection as possible, and they succeeded.
Every known precaution is taken against fire. It was the intention from
the first to build a house as proof against fire as men, money and
materials could make it. Scientists were consulted as to sanitation and
plumbing, and to these points special thought and attention were given,
Such luxurious fittings in marble and silver plate I have never seen
surpassed, if equalled; not even in my recent ten-thousand-mile tour
through the South and West, and I have visited hotels that cost all the
way from one to three millions of dollars.
Instead of marble and brass, which are used so freely in large American
hotels, rare and beautiful woods prevail in decorating the interior of
the new house. The ground floor is finished in quartered oak, the second
in bird’s-eye maple, the third and fourth in sycamore, the fifth and
sixth in red birch, and the seventh, eighth and ninth in oak. The wood
was cut, carved and polished especially for the building, and is of the
most exquisitely beautiful grain.
Max O’Rell would be pleased. Printed rules are not posted on all the
bedroom doors: it would be an act of vandalism to thrust a nail into
hard wood of such high polish and beautiful grain. The furniture and
carpets harmonize in colors and are very rich: there seems to have been
no thought of economy. The bedrooms are furnished as you would furnish
your own apartment, provided you had a large bank account. They only
lack pictures, mantel ornaments and such dainty etceteras, as you find,
for instance, in the bedrooms of Long’s Hotel in London, to give them a
finished, homelike and elegant air.
Some idea as to the extent to which this wood decoration is carried, may
be gained when it is told that the wood used to decorate the parlor and
music-room cost six thousand dollars, and yet they are small apartments
when compared, say, with those of the Windsor Hotel, New York.
The music-room adjoins the parlor, and is only separated from it by a
pair of portières. It is circular, with a frescoed dome. It is only
twenty-four feet in diameter; but a veritable bijou is this music-room.
It has tables and a cabinet of onyx, pieces of statuary and bronze, two
piano lamps and a pedestal upon which stands a vase decorated with
scenes painted by a French artist. The vase itself is three feet high.
There are two semi-circular upholstered recesses in this room curtained
in front. Occasionally these recesses are put to a very good use. I have
seen young couples, a modern Claude and Pauline, engaged in very close
conversation behind the curtains, whispering “soft nothings” to each
other. “Soft” without doubt were the words spoken, and, so far as I
heard, they amounted to nothing.
In the central front wall of this room there is a window, and pendant in
this window is a colored lamp in which electric light is continually
burning. There are similar lamps hanging in each of the cozy
recesses--the scene, with its Moorish surroundings, reminding you of an
Oriental synagogue, in which there is a similar lamp, and in which,
according to Jewish custom in public places of worship, the light is
never allowed to go out. Of electric lamps, there are twenty-five
hundred in the house.
There is a ladies’ waiting-room which is strictly reserved for ladies;
there is a ladies’ billiard-room, as well as one for gentlemen; there is
a banqueting-room for public dinners at the top of the house, and at the
bottom of the house there are cellars which contain a stock of choice
wines valued at twenty thousand dollars.
The European plan is gaining in popularity in this country. When you
proceed to write your name on the register at the Palace Hotel the clerk
asks, “European or American plan?” At the California no such question is
propounded; it is kept entirely on the European plan.
But they have a restaurant which is a feature, if not the feature of the
house. It measures 120 × 30 feet, it has tiled floor, mirrored walls,
beautifully decorated ceilings and countless electric lamps. During the
dinner hour a band, stationed in a half-hidden gallery at the end of the
restaurant, performs music that is properly called pleasing--light
selections which suggest good cheer, and which no doubt aid digestion.
The restaurant is entered from the street as well as from the interior,
and such is its popularity that it is patronized by many people who are
not otherwise guests of the house.
It is equal in style of service to any café I know of--to the Café
Savarin or the Brunswick in New York; in fact, the manager, A. F.
Kinzler, is a son of Francis Kinzler of the Brunswick.
The question of moustached waiters was easily settled at the California.
They are skilled and experienced French and Swiss waiters, and there was
no demur to the order, shave the upper lip.
SALT LAKE CITY.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, April 6, 1891.
On the last Sunday of last September I was one among the five thousand
people who enjoyed the masterly eloquence of Spurgeon at his Tabernacle
in London; to-day, Monday, I was in the Mormon Tabernacle, where a
conference was being held, and in which were gathered as many people as
the great building would hold,--seated and standing, twelve thousand.
Several Mormon elders held forth, but what they said did not
particularly interest me. It was, for the most part, a defense of their
form of “religion,” and they claimed they had a right, in this free
country, to teach and practice their peculiar doctrine.
The acoustic properties of this great edifice are excellent; I tested
them in different parts of the house, and heard almost every word that
was said by the several speakers. Each spoke but for a short time, ten
or fifteen minutes.
The most interesting part of Monday’s “session” to my mind was the
musical part, a chorus of two hundred and fifty male and female voices
singing to the rich and powerful tones of what is claimed to be the
largest organ but one in the world.
A strange feature of the assemblage was the great number of young
children and babes in arms; the crowd of baby carriages in the halls and
entrances being very noticeable.
The exterior of the Tabernacle, from its oval shape, is often likened to
half an egg bisected lengthwise; to me it looks like a tortoise, with
its low curved roof and its remarkably short pillars, only a few feet
apart.
But it is a mammoth tortoise, 250 × 150 feet, with not a column nor a
pillar to obstruct the view--the largest span of unsupported wooden roof
in the world.
The Temple in Salt Lake City, the corner-stone of which was laid on the
twelfth of April, 1853, is, like the municipal buildings in
Philadelphia, the City Hall in San Francisco and the Cathedral in
Cologne, still unfinished, although $3,500,000 has been expended in its
construction so far. The Temple’s dimensions are 200 × 100 feet.
It is built entirely of granite. The towers are beautiful. When
completed they will be 200 feet high. A marble slab 12 × 3 feet is
inserted in the centre tower. Upon that slab appears this inscription in
gold letters:
“Holiness to the Lord, the house of the Lord. Built by the Church of
Jesus Christ, of latter-day saints. Commenced April 6, 1853.
Completed”--space is left under the word “completed” in which to insert
the date, but that space may not be filled during the next quarter of a
century.
The first blocks of granite for the building were hauled from the
quarries, a distance of twenty miles, by oxen, but for many years past
the granite has been brought to the city by a railroad planned
originally by Mormons.
Salt Lake, on account of its unpaved streets, must be miserable as a
place of residence. In wet weather the mud in the streets is from six
inches to two feet deep, and in dry weather the dust is intolerable. It
is probably not quite so bad in these respects as Key West, Florida, but
it is always disagreeable enough. Yet the city is well laid out; all the
streets are over one hundred feet wide; there is a good system of
electric street-cars, and there are many fine granite and brick
business blocks. Salt Lake has an evident air of prosperity. Its
population has more than doubled in the past ten years. In 1880 it was
20,000; in 1890 45,000.
Brigham street, the Fifth avenue of Salt Lake, contains not a few
private residences of which any city might be proud.
The leading hotel is “The Templeton,” owned by a company of which D. C.
Young is president. The manager of the hotel is Alonzo Young. The
president and the manager are both sons of Brigham Young, but are half
brothers only. Brigham sleeps with a couple of his wives in a cemetery a
few hundred feet from the hotel.
The Templeton is new and substantial, but it was not erected for a
hotel, and it lacks some conveniences which you expect to find. It is
better adapted for an office building, which was its original purpose.
The dining-room is on the top floor, as is the dining-room of the
Auditorium in Chicago, and the Vendome in New York, and as is the
kitchen of the Windsor Hotel in London.
From this room in the Templeton, if you secure a choice seat, you get
most magnificent views. You are surrounded by snow-covered mountains,
and to the west you see the principal buildings of the city--the Mormon
Tabernacle, the Temple and the Assembly Hall, all enclosed and fenced
within a ten-acre lot.
We were unfortunate in the time of our visit to Salt Lake. The city was
crowded on account of the Mormon conference and all the hotels were
full. At the Templeton they had an insufficient number of waiters and
they served saucers of ice cream on warm plates.
But perhaps we are hypercritical in our notes on the shortcomings of
hotels in Salt Lake; some allowance must be made for the fact that we
had just come from a week at “The California”--that new and beautiful
hotel in San Francisco which is kept by A. F. Kinzler, the comforts and
elegancies of which, fresh in our memory and with their flavor, so to
speak, still lingering on our palate, had for the time spoiled us for
less perfect accommodations and an inferior style of living.
I had occasion to look at the city directory of Salt Lake and in turning
over the leaves I noticed that there are living no less than nine widows
of the lamented apostle of Mormonism, Brigham Young.
[Illustration]
THE AUDITORIUM HOTEL.
CHICAGO, May 16, 1891.
During his engagement here I met Mr. Willard, the English actor, walking
on Michigan avenue, with Mr. Hatton, the English dramatist, for
companion.
“Mr. Willard, where are you staying,” I happened to ask. “At the
Richelieu,” said the handsome and intellectual-looking Englishman. “I
looked at the Auditorium,” he went on to say, “but it appeared to me too
large, and such a stronghold that it almost reminded me of a prison.”
I am not surprised that its great size was an objection in his eyes,
because Englishmen prefer smaller, quieter and more home-like houses;
those great palaces in Northumberland avenue, London, were built rather
for American patronage. But that the Auditorium looks as solid and
strong as the rock of Gibraltar should not be regarded as an objection.
In the eyes of most people this is a great advantage, especially when we
remember the flimsy character of many of our hotels--those at the
seaside, for instance, or those in small towns, to say nothing of many
make-shift hotels in New York.
Among other excellent features of the Auditorium building there is this
to commend it: it is called and is believed to be absolutely fireproof.
The first and second story outside walls are of dark granite, the upper
walls are of dark Bedford stone. The materials used interiorly are iron,
brick, terra cotta, Italian marble and hard wood.
The whole structure covers one and a half acres. It stands on three
streets, Michigan avenue, Wabash avenue and Congress street, with a
frontage measuring seven hundred and ten feet. The height of the main
building is ten stories; there are eight floors in the tower--two above
the main tower--twenty stories in all; the entire height from street
level to top of tower two hundred and seventy feet. Some authorities
estimate the cost as high as four millions; the lowest estimate I have
seen printed or heard mentioned is three million two hundred thousand
dollars. It is possibly safe to say that about three millions were
invested in the enterprise, and I am told that it has yielded a profit
from the start--the hotel certainly has.
The structure includes a theatre called “the largest and most
magnificent in the world”--the “Auditorium”--used for conventions and
meetings, having a stage and what is called “the most costly organ in
the world.” Of course, being Western, everything must be the biggest and
costliest. There is also a Recital Hall, which seats five hundred
persons. The business portion of the building includes stores on the
ground floor and one hundred and thirty-six offices above, some of which
are in the tower. The United States Signal Service occupies part of the
seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth floors of the tower. From this
tower you may get an extended view of the city when the fog from the
lake is not dense, and when the chimneys of the town are not emitting
black smoke. The best time to get a view is on a clear Sunday, when many
of the factory fires are extinguished.
The Auditorium building is owned by “The Chicago Auditorium
Association,” and is managed by them; the hotel proper, which forms only
a part of the great structure, is managed by “The Auditorium Hotel
Company,” and is a separate business concern.
It is kept on both the European and American plans. For those who choose
the former there is a grand café on the ground floor; for those who
prefer the latter there is a dining-room on the top floor, on which
floor the kitchen is also situated. To the dining-room two elevators are
constantly running. In the whole building there are thirteen elevators:
in the hotel proper there are eight elevators, five for the use of
guests, three for servants.
Besides the café below, and the public dining-room above, there are a
number of private dining-rooms, and on the sixth floor there is a
banqueting hall which will seat five hundred people and which may be
called magnificent. It is built of steel, on trusses, and spans one
hundred and twenty feet over “The Auditorium.” On the panelled walls are
painted beautiful scenes in oil by skilled artists.
It does not lack for light, this banqueting hall; it contains four
hundred electric lamps. In fact, the electric plant of the building is
the largest private plant in the world--it is Western, you know. Its
first cost was $100,000 and it costs to operate $175 per day. No
electric department in any place, either public or private, that I have
visited is cleaner, neater or more methodical in system. The tools are
hung on the walls, behind glass doors. No workman may remove a tool
without giving a receipt for the same and the tool must be returned to
its place immediately after it has served the purpose for which it was
removed or the man pays a fine.
“The office” is not a small, unimportant looking apartment like the
“counting house” of an English hotel. It is after the American style,
large and showy, but there is not a waste nor a wilderness of space as
there is in some Chicago hotels, the “offices” in some of the Chicago
houses being used not only for a public rendezvous but also for a public
thoroughfare--people pass through them in going from one street to
another to save themselves the trouble of walking around the block.
The floor of the office of the Auditorium Hotel is of Italian
marble--mosaic work in artistic designs. To go into figures again,
there are of mosaic floors in the house fifty thousand square feet,
containing fifty million separate pieces of marble, each piece put in by
hand. The ceiling, which is richly decorated, and from which depend
numberless electric lights, is supported in the centre by five marble
columns nine feet in circumference. The chairs and sofas, here and
there, are of oak, plush-covered, and the walls are of nothing less
luxurious than Mexican onyx, than which for the purpose probably no
material is richer. Leading from the office to the parlor floor there is
a white marble staircase twelve feet wide. This combination of rich
materials and artistic work, with ample space, gives the Auditorium
office a gorgeous, yes, a palace-like appearance.
The dining-room on the tenth floor, measuring 175 by 48 feet, affords
extended views of the lake and a stretch of Chicago’s grand boulevard,
Michigan avenue, as far as the eye can reach. The lower part of its
walls is of mahogany panels; the six massive pillars which support the
ceiling are of mahogany, the tables and chairs and Venetian blinds of
the same costly wood. As well as six pillars, there are six arches in
this room, which also has an arched ceiling. The walls above the
mahogany dado up to the ceiling are in yellow and gold, the ceiling
delicately and beautifully frescoed.
On one of the semi-circular arched walls above the mahogany pillars
which support it, is painted a lake fishing scene, on the other a
duck-shooting scene. The latter is taken from the estate of Ferd. W.
Peck at Lake Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. It represents two or three men in
sporting costume in a canoe, which is half hidden by tall grass and cat
tails. The man in the bow stands ready to take aim at a flock of ducks
which are preparing for flight. Mr. Peck is one of the originators of
the Auditorium enterprise and the present president of the company.
There are five hundred electric lights in the dining-room; the floor is
of marble mosaic. For the American plan two dinners are served. You can
take your choice or eat both if your appetite serves; first dinner, from
twelve till two; evening dinner from six to eight.
The bedrooms are heated by steam and also have fireplaces. Of course,
they are lighted by electricity. The bedroom in which this is penned
measures twenty-one by thirteen feet. As there is no step-ladder at hand
I must guess at the height of the ceiling--about fourteen feet. The
dimensions given do not include a very large clothes closet built in the
wall and a very small washroom, too small, indeed, but supplied with hot
and cold water. On either side of this bedroom are similar rooms each
having two heavy, double doors of oak, so that while the rooms are
“communicating” the sound is not “communicated” from one room to the
other.
The walls are painted and frescoed in tints to match the wood-work,
which is of light varnished oak. Part of the furniture is of dark,
highly polished oak, the rest of cherry, covered with olive or old gold
plush. These hues in turn match the Wilton carpet which is bordered, and
upon which, here and there, is a handsome rug.