Public room

“ The halls and public rooms can be grouped so that, when the curtains hung in their wide doorways are drawn back, two, three, or four rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming effects of space and light-and-shade can be obtained. ”

“ Under one roof all sorts of community services are provided: apartments, public and private dining rooms, shops, doctors' and dentists' offices, a Christian Science reading room, recreation hall, and a theater, all decorated in a colorful modern manner. ”

“ In many places new school buildings are being constructed with an auditorium, which may be used as a gymnasium, library room, dining room, etc., so that they may serve as social centers for the community. ”

“ If the ground glass of the vestibule door be exposed and staring, the hall floor bare and cold, the hall chair hard and stiff, the doors to the reception or sitting-room all closed, rising black and grim before you, and the hall itself so dark that you can not see even where to lay down your companionable umbrella, does there not come over you a chill, as if you were being repelled by the spirit of inhospitality? ”

“ A spacious assembly room—let us call it by the good old name of "parlour," for there is much quietly animated talk going on—talk, and needlework of all kinds, from the knitting of a warm woollen shawl to the manipulation of delicate lace, and the deft handling of implements for making those exquisite tortures of society known as antimacassars. With ever so wide an experience of halls, salons, suites, or drawing-rooms, the visitor can see nothing resembling this wonderful parlour elsewhere. A room of noble proportions, one end of which is occupied by an organ ”

“ It is, perhaps, little to be lamented that merely frivolous amusements should be wholly confined to the private circles of social life, but there are others which might be cultivated with infinite advantage to the community at large, and for which the great room at the Town Hall seems to be most admirably adapted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, in all establishments whatever, of course some disparity exists between the comforts of the drawing-room and best bed-rooms, and the servant's hall and attics, but here it is no longer a matter of degree. The young woman who performs the office of lady's-maid, and the lads who wait upon us at table, have neither table to feed at nor chair to sit down upon themselves. ”

“ Social Hall is a spacious and cheerful room. The motto of "Our Mountain Home" in brilliant evergreen capitals adorns one end of the hall, while at the other a platform is erected for the musicians, behind whom there is room for those who don't dance to sit and look at the festivities. ”

“ Often the chair or settee is of the most uncomfortable design, conspiring with the narrow quarters to make the visitor's impression of the house and its inmates a very disagreeable one. If space is lacking to make the hall a comfortable and pleasing room, it should be abolished, and the visitor, if a social one, taken at once to the parlor, and if a business one, to the living-room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The furniture, though simple, is sufficient; to satisfy our national nervousness, the halls are so well-stocked with rocking-chairs that European visitors look about them with alarm, and try to find some seats that promise a more stable equilibrium; the sleeping-rooms are scrupulously clean; soft blankets, snow-white sheets, and comfortable beds assure a good night's rest; and the staff of colored waiters in the dining-room, steam-heat, a bell-boy service, and electric lights made us forget our distance from great cities and the haunts of men. ”

“ Just opposite this sitting room of the King, or on the next floor, is the sitting room of the Queen, covered chairs, clean curtains, nice carpets, books on the table, canary birds at the window, everything tidy, neat and beautiful, and according to your programme the occupants of this room will so demoralize the occupants of the other as to completely undermine all society. ”

“ A fine salon with luxurious appointments, Turkish rugs, furniture upholstered in leather, sofas and armchairs, and a heavy carved table, is the reception room, where gentlemanly attendants in uniform are at your service,—a contrast indeed to the dingy hallways where people are kept, by often pert youths, from entering the sacred though bare and noisy quarters of the editorial staff of some of our great and wealthy journals. On the other side of the large patio is a handsomely decorated hall seating 500, with furniture of red and gold, used only for entertainments for the employees. ”

“ The little you see of the people is very attractive. Passing along the desolate streets, you glance in at an open door and see a most delightful cabinet picture of domestic life. All the doors in the house are open. You can see through the entry, the front room, into the cool court beyond, gay with oleanders and vines, where a group of women half dressed are sewing and spinning and cheering their souls with gossip. ”

“ While these men are being served or are seated in the social room, meetings and lectures are conducted at the same time on the other side of the partition in the audience hall, which is occupied several times a day, and is used for social purposes between the meetings. We now pass into the lounge, which is filled with men, busy at their games. ”

“ On each side of the waiting-hall is a dressing room—one for women, one for men. Into these rooms the accident cases are taken one after the other. Here the house-surgeon and his dressers are engaged, and here the many-sided drama of the Receiving Room reaches its culminating point. It is an uninviting room, very plain, and, like the outer hall, bears an aspect of callous unconcern. ”

“ The most liberal and generous rule is adopted in making this show-room and the whole establishment accessible to all who wish to visit it. Such persons are conducted through the gorgeous hall and shown all they wish to see with an affable attention and courtesy which all will remember who have shared them. ”

“ Each lady has sent cards to her friends and the guests are beginning to flock in. The coloured-tiled corridors and window-ledges are gaily decorated with palms, ferns, and flowers. A hospitable custom prevails. Wherever a hall-door is found open it is a signal that visitors to the other residents are permitted to enter and look round the rooms. Should any lady be unable to receive she "sports her oak." Ample refreshments are provided in the club-room, and as many doors are invitingly thrown open, you take advantage of the implied permission, and are kindly received by each hostess. ”

“ People who appreciate more and more the joy of living have pulled hall and sitting-room together into one great family meeting place, leaving a small vestibule, decreased the size of the dining-room and built in many windows, so that it becomes almost an outdoor room, and given the parlor a little more dignity and serenity and its right name—the drawing-room. ”

“ To go into this room it is necessary to get permission from the attendants in the hall, who make you sign your name on a piece of paper. Once inside, the size of the vast room almost takes your breath away. ”

“ While there is a certain responsibility about the coherent furnishings of all other rooms, from the music room of bare floor and scant drapery to the library with its heavy rugs, draped alcoves, and precise shelving—the sitting room may take tribute from all others. ”

“ In this wing of the house, office follows after office; they are all on the ground-floor, and receive their light through the ceiling; they are all constructed in a grand style, and many of them are fit for a king’s banqueting-room. ”

“ All the ladies are in full toilets, and the house is lighted as if it were evening. A table is spread, as if for an ordinary reception or party, in the back parlor or dining-room. A servant opens the street-door and the gentlemen leave their cards in the hall. They enter the drawing-room with hat in hand, or they may leave it in the hall with overcoat and cane. ”

“ In place of the old hall is an entrance lobby and a dining-room, which, with a breakfast-room and drawing-room, all of large size and excellent proportions, a back drawing-room, study, and some smaller apartments, form a suite, quite equal to the aspects and pretensions of the building. ”

“ If your party meet for reading, have a table with the books in the centre of the apartment, that will divide the room, those reading being on one side, the listeners on the other. Be careful here not to endeavor to shine above your guests, leaving to them the most prominent places, and taking, cheerfully, a subordinate place. ”

“ You have your suite of rooms in one or another pavilion, you take your meals there in your own dining-room, and you can shut yourself off, as it were, from the greater part of the establishment and enjoy privacy and quiet. ”

“ We shall now go into another room and wait the council's adjournment; then you will have an interview with one delegated to talk with you."
From the hallway they entered a smaller room, decorated with beautiful pictures and adorned with statuary. Books, newspapers and magazines were at hand, and when the visitors were tired of gazing, they sat down by a table. ”

“ On this occasion, two or three additional drawing-rooms were opened, though the frugality of Congress has prevented them from finishing the principal reception-room of the building. I will acknowledge the same sort of surprise I felt at the Castle Garden fête, at finding the assemblage so respectable in air, dress and deportment. The evening at the White House, or drawing-room, as it is sometimes pleasantly called, is, in fact, a collection of all classes of people who choose to go to the trouble and expense of appearing in dresses suited to an ordinary evening party. ”

“ Such beautiful rooms! First an antechamber, with cabinets of Italian carving and vitrines and inlaid tables; then the Empress's salon, a very large room filled with low arm-chairs, tables covered with knickknacks, books with paper-cutters still in them, as if they were just being read, screens with engravings à la Louis Seize, and beautiful fans on the walls, also splendid tapestries. ”

“ The servants never wait in the ante-room,—here called the hall,—which, like the overture of an opera, is designed to express the character of the whole: it is generally decorated with statues or pictures, and, like the elegant staircase and the various apartments, is appropriated to the use of the family and guests, who have the good taste rather to wait on themselves than to have an attendant spirit always at their heels. ”

“ There are certainly also hall scenes in castles or private houses, and it is sometimes a matter of taste whether you assume a hall scene or a threshold scene. [184] Certain features of hall scenes may be enumerated. Personages can go into, or come forth from, an inner room. They can be brought in from without. [185] Seats are available, and a chair or ‘state’ for a sovereign. [186] A law court has its ‘bar’. Banquets can be served. [187] Masks [65] may come dancing in. [188] Even a play ‘within a play’ can be presented ”

“ There’s a great crowd round you, but there’s also a great stillness; every now and then you hear some one expectorate. There are a thousand people in this huge and hideous structure; they feed together in a big white-walled room. ”

“ I would have a book case, at least a book-shelf, in every room in the house—I have three in my hall, even—and the reception room surely is no exception to the rule. Let there be books at hand for the entertainment of guests, and let there be every facility possible for rendering the room light enough to read or to sew. In a large room there should be more than one table, and student lamps in abundance where there is no gas. Where gas is burned there should still be lamps or drop-lights on the tables. ”

“ The guest rooms on the floors above have every convenience known to modern inventive genius, including telephone connection with the office and through a ‘central’ to every other room in the house. A grand hall-way extends from south to north seven hundred feet, passing through the rotunda. ”

“ It is a rich and strong spirit, not only filling the room, but pouring out from the door and possessing the hall, redeeming an opposite dining-room from grossness, and a more distant drawing-room from frivolity, and even lending a goodly flavour to bedrooms on upper floors. ”

“ Books, too, lay about in little zigzag heaps; while a bunch of keys, a pair of lady’s gloves, and a skein of coloured wool lay huddled together on the centre of the sideboard. The whole arrangement, or rather disarrangement, of the room bespoke, on the part of the presiding female management, an indifference to those minor details of order and comfort a due attention to which makes home (a genuine English home) the happiest spot in the world.
Opposite to this room, on the other side of the hall, was another of similar size, used apparently as a sort of reception-room. ”