Private room

“ The right of privacy is sacred, and should always be respected. It is exceedingly improper to enter a private room anywhere without knocking. No relation, however intimate, will justify an abrupt intrusion upon a private apartment. ”

“ An obliging bunch of keys lay invitingly upon the study table, and rapidly I opened drawer after drawer in that apartment and the bedroom, and became more and more irritated, as my search proved ever fruitless.
The reception-room only was left, and my vexation evaporated in a laugh of approaching triumph, as I realized that a cunning man would hide what he had to hide in the most open room, and not in the most private. ”

“ After settling the positions of the rooms with regard to the quarters of the sky, we must next consider the principles on which should be constructed those apartments in private houses which are meant for the householders themselves, and those which are to be shared in common with outsiders. The private rooms are those into which nobody has the right to enter without an invitation, such as bedrooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, and all others used for the like purposes. ”

“ The ends were screened off by wooden partitions, the kitchen at one side, the private apartments at the other. The Hall was used as a dining-room and sitting-room, and the household would sleep there, both tables and beds being movable. Later, the tendency arose to have separate apartments for different purposes, and the number of rooms in a house multiplied. In modern planning strict privacy is essential, and each room must be accessible from the halls and stairways. As soon as a room becomes a mere passage to another, it loses its chief value. ”

“ Two folding-doors opened from the front room: the left to my suite of bedroom, bathroom, and dressing-room; the right to Durand’s. Beyond the latter’s was a charming little private dining-room with a small lift which connected directly with the kitchen. There were windows in all these rooms, giving either on street or courtyard. But the main point was this: that anybody wishing to enter Durand’s or my suite, or the private dining-room, had to pass from the main landing, up the branch corridor, and through our front room.
It was really a very safe place. ”

“ Rollin's disgust. Then, too, she had to do without a private sitting-room, for the inns had only one room that was not a bedroom, and that one was a big public room, which served as sitting-room and dining-room to all classes alike; so that she was obliged either to stay altogether in her sleeping apartment, or else to condescend to sit at the same table with the landlord, his family, the driver, me, and any commis-voyageur, shopkeeper, peasant, or other person who might happen to come in. ”

“ The private apartments are commonly separate from what we should call the ‘keeping room,’ and have a separate entrance, if under the same roof; it is, however, very common to allot some detached building, having a compound divided off, and perfectly sequestered from the other accommodations, set apart for the zenanah, or female part of the family. ”

“ It is extremely rude, on being admitted to a private apartment, to look curiously about, as if taking an inventory of all that is to be seen. We have known ladies whose eyes were all the time gazing round, and 49even slily peering under tables, sofas, &c.; turning their heads to look after every person who chanced to be moving about the room, and giving particular attention to whatever seemed to be in disorder or out of place. ”

“ A Bedroom in the Union Pacific Hotel, North Platte—Not Much of a Hardship, Is It?
As a matter of fact, it is an ocher-colored wooden railroad station, a rather bare dining-room, and lunch counter, and perfectly good, clean bedrooms upstairs. You cannot get a suite with a private bath, and if you are more or less spoiled by the supercomforts of luxurious living, you may not care to stay very long. ”

“ Now if we try to arrange a private sitting room off from your room, it will either make your bedroom too small or else rob the rest of us. And another big bay window would cost hundreds of dollars more. ”

“ Of the princess's private apartments up stairs it will suffice to say that a prettier room than her royal highness's own boudoir, or sitting-room, was never seen. All the visitors' rooms are perfect, nor are the servants' comforts neglected. ”

“ Other Public Rooms.—But beside the drawing-room there are a number of other large and beautiful apartments near by—the ladies’ billiard-room, the reception-room, writing-room, chess-room, etc.,—something like{210} the elegant public rooms (which are not so very public) in the Hotel Victoria, London. There are a dozen or more suites of rooms with private parlor for each suite, opening on the garden. ”

“ They are partly “housekeeping” suites, i. e., having kitchens and dining-rooms; partly “hotel” suites, i. e., having neither kitchens nor dining-rooms, the occupants preferring to use the public café and dining-rooms; and partly “semi-housekeeping” suites, i. e., having dining-rooms and china-closets with dumb-waiters connecting them with the public-kitchen, but no independent kitchen. The “housekeeping” suites require one more bed-room than the others, to accommodate a private cook. ”

“ On the tenth floor there is provision for a play room and gymnasium for the children, well lighted and ventilated and commanding a grand view of the city and surroundings, while on the ninth floor there will be extra servants' rooms, private laundries and drying rooms, dormitories for transient male and female servants and attachés of the building, and lavatories, toilet rooms, and bathrooms for their use. ”

“ Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds. The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation. ”

“ One must have at least a waiting room and a private office even if a single rented room must be cheaply partitioned to make the division. A larger suite is a better investment when possible. In the waiting-room should be found easy chairs, library table, hall-rack, mirror, and an easy divan or couch. ”

“ In spite of the additional labor that it 389makes, the ideal place for a sick room in a private house is as far from the ground as possible. To be of any service at all isolation must be real and complete. ”

“ Our friends professed themselves astonished that we contemplated the extravagance of a guest-chamber, for here in New York, where rents are so abnormal, people economize first of all upon their friends, and I am told that an extra bedroom where a chance guest may be asked to remain overnight is the exception with people of moderate means. Such monstrous selfishness struck me as appalling. To provide only for ourselves—for our own comfort! To have no room in all your own luxury to share with a friend! ”

“ Here she can have her counsels with her children, or her tradespeople, or her employees, without the distractions of chance interruptions, for this one room should have doors that open and close, doors that are not to be approached without invitation. The room may be as austere and business-like as a down-town office, or it may be a nest of comfort and luxury primarily planned for relaxation, but it must be so placed that it is a little apart from the noise and flurry of the rest of the house or it has no real reason-for-being. ”

“ Human light and warmth are so wanting in some rooms, it is so evident that they are never used, that you can never be at ease there. In vain the housemaid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn chair toward chair; in vain it is attempted to imitate a negligent arrangement of the centre-table.
“Books that have really been read and laid down, chairs that have really been moved here and there in the animation of social contact, have a sort of human vitality in them; and a room in which people really live and enjoy is as different from a shut-up apartment as a live woman from a wax image. ”

“ Place your bed against the side wall, so that the morning light will not be directly in your eyes. A folding screen covered with chintz or linen will prove a God-send.
Perhaps you will have a guest-room, but I doubt it. Most women find it more satisfactory and less expensive to send their guests to a nearby hotel than to keep an extra room for a guest. The guest room is impractical in a small apartment, but you can arrange to take care of an over-night guest by planning your living-room wisely. ”

“ Privacy could not be maintained in a house built for a family of five made to do duty for twelve, with one bath-room, thin-walled bedrooms with connecting doors through which the light streamed when one wished to sleep, and words frequently came not intended for outsiders. Who that has experienced the two could ever think the bachelor apartment with its neat bath-room and double-doored entrance an objectionable feature in modern intellectual life? ”

“ We had eleven closets with an extra storeroom for trunks in the basement, and enough cabinets in the kitchen and butler's pantry to stock a hotel, and as a crowning glory the front door did not open opposite the bathroom or kitchen as is the case in most apartments, but was near the front like the home of a Christian, and the dining-room gave into the front room with a largeness of vista which made us feel like millionaires. ”

“ My chamber was large and beautifully furnished; the hall and dining room of our flat would have gone into it with a good remainder; yet it was not a place I could settle down in for work. It conveyed the idea of impermanence, making me feel transient as in a hotel bedroom. This, of course, was the fact. But some rooms convey a settled, lasting hospitality even in a hotel; this one did not; and as I was accustomed to work in the room I slept in, at least when visiting, a slight frown must have crept between my eyes. ”

“ Every effort is made to give the sleeping apartment as much the atmosphere of a reception-room as sofas and chairs and an absence of toilet appliances will allow, for when, right away in the fifteenth century, it became the custom for the sovereign to hold audiences in the bed-chamber the rest of French society imitated the royal example, until it became an established usage in bourgeois circles as much as in those of the class which enjoyed the direct influence of court fashions. ”

“ This is a rudeness which nothing warrants. There are times when we wish to be alone in our own rooms, and when we want to feel that we are safe from sudden interruption during the processes of bathing and dressing, even if the door of our apartment is not locked. One's own room should be so completely her own that her nearest and dearest will not feel at liberty to enter without permission. Of course it is frequently the case that two persons, sisters, or husband and wife, or mother and daughter, occupy the same chamber. ”

“ I had now time for a survey of the apartment; and, generally speaking, a drawing-room is no bad indication of the tastes and temperament of the owners of the establishment.
The practised eye speedily detects in the character and arrangement of a chamber something of its occupant. In some houses, the absence of all decoration, the simple puritanism of the furniture, bespeaks the life of quiet souls whose days are as devoid of luxury as their dwellings. You read in the cold grey tints the formal stiffness and unrelieved regularity around the Quaker-like flatness of their existence. ”

“ You go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket and an insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter, she strikes a bell and a serving man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack and a sofa in it, and there you undress at your leisure. ”

“ Comfort and space, security from heat and cold, the very object of a house, are quite secondary matters, and in most cases seem to have escaped attention. There has, however, been of late much care for family morality, and so the moderate-sized bedroom is divided by two thin partitions, and becomes three closets, or there is an attic made of slate and plaster in the roof. The sitting room is but a cupboard, and the place is altogether fitter for a kennel than a home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One room in the house is selected, and every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing makes a room so home-like, so companionable, and gives it such an air of refinement, as the presence of books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a transient call, and give it the air of a room where one feels like taking off one's things to stay. ”

“ The modern apartment-house has a common hall and stairway for a dozen families and a common dining-room and kitchen on the model of a hotel. The tenements are human incubators from which children overflow upon the streets, boarders invade the privacy of the family bedroom, and even sanitary conveniences are public. Home life is violated in the tenement by the pressure of an unfavorable environment; it perishes on the avenue because of a compelling desire to gain as much freedom as possible from household care. ”