Part 18

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.

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.

The curtains are of reddish-brown plush, lined with old-gold silk; inside these are lace curtains, and against the windows are Venetian blinds of oak. The windows are of plate glass, large and massive--much too heavy, in fact, or else the sashes are not put in by a master hand. They are raised or lowered with great difficulty, notwithstanding a pair of brass handles is attached to each lower sash. For such large, weighty windows they have a better plan in the Windsor Hotel, London. Long, loose ropes with light, wooden handles attached are fastened to the upper and lower parts of the upper sash, and by this method the heavy windows are raised or lowered with perfect ease.

But I have wandered away in thought from my apartment in the Auditorium, which is lighted by a handsome, seven-lamp electrolier pendant from the ceiling, with a convenient tap just inside the door to turn on or off as you enter or leave the room.

There is an electric dial in each room, the invention of the New Haven Clock Company. Upon this dial the inventor and hotel-keeper combined have anticipated as many as twenty-four wants of the guest, from a chambermaid to a doctor; from a telegraph blank to a hansom cab. Max O’Rell may poke fun at this anticipation of so many wants in American hotels, but if they had such an arrangement in Continental hotels, their system would be greatly improved.

You need not trouble yourself about good air or bad air at the Auditorium: the house is ventilated automatically, by machinery. Among other modern improvements is a letter chute which extends to the top of the house. Your letters from any floor drop into a locked United States post-office box, opened at intervals by the official carrier.

There are four hundred and fifty rooms. As hotel men usually reckon “about one and a half guests to a room” there is accommodation for six hundred people. Charge for rooms: European plan, $2 to $5 per day; American plan, $4 to $6 per day.

The house is managed by James H. Breslin and R. H. Southgate. It is not necessary to explain who these men are, and to commend them, at this late day, would be no compliment.

MAX O’RELL ON AMERICAN HOTELS.

M. Paul Blouet (Max O’Rell) is a brilliant writer and a clever, entertaining talker, but in his article in the _North American Review_ for January, 1891, entitled “Reminiscences of American Hotels,” he shows that he lacks fairness as a critic, and that he writes without the necessary knowledge of his subject. His remarks concerning the American methods of conducting hotels may be amusing, but when he makes comparisons between English and American hotels and their systems, it is evident that as a critic he is open to criticism. In his opening page he says:

“When you enter a hotel not a salute, not a word, not a smile of welcome. The negro takes your bag and makes a sign that your case is settled. You follow him. For the time being you lose your personality and become No. 375, as you would in jail.”

The facts are just the contrary. The clerks, porters and waiters in American hotels are only too glad if they can learn your name. They will pronounce it and announce you on the smallest possible provocation. Max O’Rell’s remarks on this point would exactly fit if he were writing about some large hotels in London patronized by Americans. At those houses, the Langham excepted, you do not enter your name in a register, and you are known only by the number of the room you occupy. If a friend calls, his card will be carried about on a silver salver by a little page whose duty it is, in going through the halls and public rooms in search of you, to bawl out at the top of his voice not your name, but the number of the apartment you occupy; and to this you are expected to respond.

But people are not so apt to know the hotel customs which obtain in cities where they live, and that may account for M. Blouet’s ignorance.

This French-English humorist tries to make it appear that in every American hotel the fire-escape consists of “twenty yards of coiled rope.” I believe that the New York State Legislature expects all hotels in that State to make such provision, but if it is done in New York it is certainly not the case in other States, as I know, for I have lived at hotels in many States of the Union during the past few months, westward as far as California, and as far south as New Orleans.

Mr. O’Rell feels very much injured because order and method reign in the dining-room. 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. Of course the head waiter assigns seats. This good custom obtains in England and France as it does elsewhere; without it there would be confusion for all concerned.

It would be strange if such a close and keen observer, as Max O’Rell certainly is, did not make some good points in such a labored article. He makes one when he objects to the solemn, almost funereal air which pervades an American dining-room. People can be well mannered and yet be and appear to be, in good spirits, whereas we seem to make a business, a sad business of eating--it cannot be called “dining.” You seldom or never hear such a thing as a laugh in our hotel dining-rooms, and yet everybody knows that laughter is the best aid to digestion. There is a time for everything, and when should there be good cheer if not at dinner time?

O’Rell shows that he is unfair and uninformed when he is discussing some of the important features of our hotels, but he scores another good point when he talks of the shameful waste of food in American hotels. I quote in full his remarks on that head. They cannot be too often repeated:

“The thing which, perhaps, strikes me most disagreeably in the American hotel dining-room is the sight of the tremendous waste of food that goes on at every meal. No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with this; but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most remarkable. In France where, I venture to say, people live as well as anywhere else, if not better, there is a perfect horror of anything like waste of good food. It is to me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the wanton manner in which some Americans will waste at one meal enough to feed several fellow creatures.”

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