Hotel lobby

“ Stick around the Alexandria hotel lobby for ten minutes and the pedigree of every male and female whose face appears upon the screen will be peddled to you ad libitum.
Three years ago the Alexandria hotel lobby was the scene of gigantic picture operations—in the mind. It was customary for ten million dollar organizations to be formed every five minutes. That was in the days of the magic rug. It seemed no one could step on the rug in front of the hotel counter without becoming stricken. New studios by the thousands were built every night between six-thirty and seven o’clock. ”

“ No hotel in the world contains within itself so many features of unusual interest as the Congress Hotel and Annex. A walk from your apartments will convince you instantly. From the Grand Lobby, a magnificent achievement in architecture and decoration, where onyx, mosaic and gold-bossed pilasters uprear a vaulted roof of extreme beauty, you may stroll down the Marble Hallway, famed throughout the civilized world ”

“ The Governor's suite at the Ajax is on the mezzanine floor, at the head of the grand staircase. As Gray descended the spacious marble steps, he saw that the hotel was indeed doing a big business, for already the lobby was thickly peopled and at the desk a group of new arrivals were plaintively arguing with a bored and supercilious room clerk.
Some men possess an effortless knack of commanding attention and inspiring courtesy. ”

“ It is we who set the pace in luxury and style. The hotels merely live up to our standards. The manager of a shabby hotel can not see me walk into his lobby without feeling instantly ashamed of the poor accommodations he has to offer me. The hotel managers were so irked at being put out of countenance by the obvious superiority of the casual hotel visitor that they set out to provide for him a proper setting. ”

“ The majority of men who pay the bills at the big hotels are forced to struggle hard to kill time when they have finished their golf-{23}playing for the day. Enormous numbers of them seem to spend most of their spare time sitting dolefully around hotel lobbies and expecting telegrams that never come. If you fall into conversation with any man in any Palm Beach hotel lobby, he invariably explains his inactivity by saying that he is expecting a telegram. ”

“ Business often takes the modern woman into strange towns, and there is no reason why she should feel the least hesitancy in stopping at a hotel—providing she knows how to conduct herself.
Hand baggage should be relinquished at the door to attendants of the hotel. The woman should make her way immediately to the desk-clerk, register, and then follow the page assigned to her, to her room. It is not good form to loiter in the lobby before going to one's room after one has registered. ”

“ He says:
“When you enter the dining-room you must not believe you can go and sit where you like. The chief waiter assigns you a seat and you must take it. I have constantly seen Americans stop on the threshold of the dining-room and wait until the chief waiter had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch them in their turn. I never saw them venture alone and take an empty seat without the sanction of the waiter.”
Chaos would reign indeed if the regular guests of a hotel had no regular seats, and if every newcomer were allowed to sit where he pleased. ”

“ One of my Lords said that he agreed in the opinion that there is no obligation on a guest at an inn to lock his bedroom door; but the fact of the guest having the means of securing himself and choosing not to use them is one which, with the other circumstances of the case, should be left to the jury. The weight of it must, of course, depend upon the state of society at the time and place; what would be prudent at a small hotel in a small town might be the extreme of imprudence at a large hotel in a city like Bristol, where probably three hundred bedrooms were occupied by people of all sorts. ”

“ I hastened to reply, “if you will so accept it.”
“Then I would ask,” continued my interrogator, “must a man be a certain length of time at an hotel before he is entitled to the privileges of a guest?”
“Oh, dear, no! Merely purchasing temporary refreshment at an inn makes the purchaser a guest and renders the innkeeper liable for the safety of the goods he may have with him, [121] if he is a traveler.”
“But who is a traveler?”
“One who is absent from his home, whether on pleasure or business. [122] A townsman or neighbor, who is actually traveling, may be a guest. ”

“ Etiquette at hotels is a subject that has been but lightly treated upon by our modern philosophy, and yet it is a subject that lies very near to every American heart. Had I not already more reforms on hand than I can possibly successfully operate I would gladly use my strong social influence and trenchant pen in that direction. Etiquette at hotels, both on the part of the proprietor, and his hirelings, and the guest, is a matter that calls loudly for improvement.
The hotel waiter alone, would well repay a close study. ”

“ Nothing could well be more paltry, dishonest and irritating than such a system, for even the seaside lodging-house keepers’ extras are not nearly so annoying. Fortunately the better class of hotels have abolished the system altogether. You know what you have to pay, and even if you feel that the old extras are added in, that is not half so irritating as the old system.
One of the strangest things that I have noted in my hotel experience is the inferiority of the Temperance Hotel. ”

“ Half-way to Stinson’s—I was on foot—I came to a sudden halt. It was as if the sense of responsibility toward Lovey wouldn’t allow me to go any farther. I said to myself that I must think the matter out—that I must find and would find additional justification for my course before going on.
To do that I turned into a chance hotel.
I like the wide hospitality of American hotels, where any tired or lonesome wayfarer can enter and sit down. I have never been a clubman. Clubs are too elective and selective for my affinities; they are too threshed and winnowed and refined. ”

“ In the hotels and lodging houses every arrangement is made to keep each guest or party of guests as separate as possible from all the rest. There are no public tables or public drawing rooms. Each party, on its arrival at the hotel, takes a suit of rooms, consisting, at least, of a sitting room and bed room, and every thing that they require is served to them separately there, just as if there were no other guests in the house. ”

“ The two officials had reference, however, to two different grades of lodging-houses. The cost of a night’s lodging makes the difference. There is a wider gap between the “hotel”—they are all hotels—that charges a quarter and the one that furnishes a bed for a dime than between the bridal suite and the every-day hall bedroom of the ordinary hostelry.
The metropolis is to lots of people like a lighted candle to the moth. It attracts them in swarms that come year after year with the vague idea that they can get along here if anywhere; that something is bound to turn up among so many. ”

“ Then the maître-d'hôtel rushes at the door and closes it violently,—only for it to be re-opened a minute afterwards by a waiter or visitor entering from the terrace below! A mechanical contrivance and a light screen would do away with the nuisance, for a nuisance it most undoubtedly is. The perpetual banging causes headache, irritation, and indigestion, and those who have suffered n'y reviendront pas, like several Marlbrooks. Let the proprietor look to this, and, where most things are done so well, and not unreasonably, don't let there be a Havre-and-Havre policy of hotel management. ”

“ Let it be understood once for all that I dislike hotels as necessary evils, but that my sense of justice compels me to admit that one may be made comfortable in a gigantic caravanserai where it would seem impossible for the personal element to have any chance to express itself, and, conversely, that one may be made abjectly miserable in a very small hotel where it might naturally be thought that the proprietor would make it his sole business to see that his guests were comfortable. ”

“ At the table we were joined by an acquaintance, who informed me that he had great difficulty in obtaining admission to the house, as the innkeeper had a grudge against him.
“No matter what personal objection a host may have, he cannot refuse to receive a guest. Every one who opens an inn by the wayside, and professes to exercise the business and employment of a common innkeeper, is bound to afford such shelter and accommodation as he possesses to all travelers who apply therefor, and tender, or are able to pay, the customary charges,” [7] I remarked. ”

“ After the insults which follow a refusal to enter one of their conveyances have subsided, the agents of the hotels commence a vociferous campaign against the newcomers, and very clever it is in its way. They are able to distinguish a foreigner at one glance, and will change the name of the hotel which they represent a score of times in as many seconds in order to bag their quarry. For the patriotic American they have the New York Hotel, the Denver House, the Hotel California, and many other hostelries named after American cities. ”

“ The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a huge transparent cage, flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a sort of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously. The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and saw a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor, with their legs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing in a queue, as at the ticket office of a railway station, before a brilliantly illuminated counter of vast extent. ”

“ I said, “of course, simply ordering goods to be placed in a particular room is not such a taking under one’s own care as to absolve an innkeeper from his responsibility. [113] I recollect a case where a traveler, on arriving, requested his impedimenta, as old Cæsar used to say, to be taken to the commercial room; they were, and they were stolen, and the innkeeper was held bound to recoup the man, although he proved that the usual practice of the house was to place the luggage in the guest’s room, and not in the commercial room, unless an express order was given to the contrary. ”

“ I remarked, “unless, indeed, you were a naturalist.”
“I think,” continued our traveled friend, “that one never feels at home in an European hotel. You never know your landlord or your fellow-sojourners; the table d’hôte in the grand dining-halls prevents all intercourse between the guests; they never have a smoking-room, a billiard-room, a bar-room, or a bath-room; if you want to do ‘tumbies’ you are furnished with a regular old tub.” ”

“ Though it must be admitted that tables d'hôte abroad are not the banquets which the travelling Briton believes them to be, our own hotel public dinners are inferior to their originals, and, what is very hard, those who pay for an entertainment in private suffer from them. The guest who happens to dine later than the table d'hôte in his own apartment can hardly escape getting things 'warmed up;' and if he dines at the same time he has nobody to wait on him. There is one thing that presses with great severity on paterfamilias—the charge which is made at many of the large hotels of 1s. ”

“ In New York, the law is very similar, [188] being to the effect that the hotel-keeper shall not be liable for loss of money, jewels, ornaments, or valuables, when he shall have provided a safe for the custody of such property, and shall have posted a notice to that effect in the room occupied by the guest, and the guest shall have neglected to deposit such property in the safe. ”

“ What most impresses one in hotels is the loyalty among employes. No one tells them what to do or what to say, or what not to say, or what not to do, yet you will observe that one who professes to be your friend will not say unfriendly things behind your back. This condition is noticeable among those of inferior rank, as well as among managers, stewards, clerks and housekeepers. As a rule, one table in the main dining room is reserved for the officers, clerks, stewards, cashiers, bookkeepers, checkers, stenographers and housekeepers. ”

“ It is for the most part a large private house, without, though not always without, the parade of concierge and other distinctive marks of an hotel. As a rule, to which there are exceptions, it is more homely, there is less style in the method of conducting, less appearance about the rooms, and smaller attention paid to service and sanitary arrangements. On the other hand, the company is smaller, and as the people come to remain for periods of time, they fraternize better, and there is a good deal more of the home feeling in a pension than ever finds its way into any hotel. ”

“ One hears that this sort of open conviviality tempts by its facility to those excesses of hospitality which are such a drain on English incomes; but again that is something of which an outsider can hardly venture to have an opinion. What is probably certain is that the modern hotel and restaurant, with their cheerful ease, are pushing the old-fashioned lodging as well as the old-fashioned hotel out of the general favor, and have already driven them to combine their attractions or repulsions on a level where they are scarcely distinguishable as separate species. ”