City Journal: Hotel Americana
From early in the nation’s history, hotels were part of its fabric.
… In his well-researched and well-illustrated history, A. K. Sandoval-Strausz shows how the purpose-built American hotel evolved from the often-improvisational inn. George Washington’s presidential tours of the states from 1789 to 1791 first demonstrated to the young nation what social, political, and economic advantages good inns could offer. Leading citizens, local officials, and old comrades-in-arms tried to persuade the first president to put up in their houses, but Washington insisted on staying at inns: they would avoid any appearance of favoritism and give him a feel for the pulse of the places he visited. The tours helped unify the fractious young nation by giving citizens forums for debating and resolving disputed issues. In the process, inns became famous for having hosted the president—New York’s own Fraunces Tavern is proof of that—and they increasingly sought to improve services and accommodations.
Thus was born the American hotel. Its development, like that of so many other things in the new republic, was rapid. At the beginning of Washington’s tours, even the best inns were ramshackle affairs of three floors and 20 rooms, costing no more than $15,000; by 1809, the best hotels could boast as many as seven floors and over 200 rooms, and cost more than a half a million dollars.
Sandoval-Strausz, who teaches history at the University of New Mexico, charts the history of this quintessentially American institution with élan. The first great American hotel was New York’s City Hotel, built in the fashionable Federalist style between lower Broadway and Temple Street in 1794. Its interior included a ballroom, public parlors, a bar, stores, offices, and the country’s largest circulating library. Offering 197 rooms, mostly for overnight guests, the City Hotel was taller than all but the loftiest New York churches, and with a $200,000 price tag, it was also the city’s costliest building, with the exception of the newly built headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. The hotel became so popular with Gotham business leaders that they moved the Custom House there. The City Hotel’s success and prestige inspired other hoteliers around the country to try to emulate it. …
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