Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 221: Hotel History: Hotel Florence

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 221: Hotel History: Hotel Florence

By Stanley Turkel | October 22, 2019

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: Hotel Florence

The Hotel Florence is a former operating hotel located in the Pullman Historic District on the far south side of Chicago, Illinois. In 1880, the railroad pioneer George Pullman purchased a site of 3,500 acres near Lake Calumet on the Illinois Central Railroad. With demand exploding for his sleeping railroad cars. Pullman decided to build the largest factory to produce them and a company town to house his employees and their families. Pullman believed that if he built a town without saloons and agitators, his workers would be forever loyal to the Pullman creed. Pullman City ultimately grew to 12,000 inhabitants. It had its own shopping center, a savings bank, theater, church, schools and playgrounds. It also had a library of 8,000 books and the luxurious Hotel Florence (named after Pullman’s daughter). Pullman City and the Hotel Florence were designed by architect Solon Spencer Beman (1853-1914). Several of Beman’s largest commissions including the Pullman Office Building, Pabst Building and the Grand Central Station in Chicago have since been demolished. Beman also designed many Christian Science churches. Celebrated at first for good planning Pullman City’s reputation suffered when the Pullman Palace Car Company refused to lower rents after cutting wages, starting the violent national Pullman strike.

The Hotel Florence was chiefly remarkable for the elegance and beauty of design and finish, together with its luxury in furniture, fixtures and appliances, all combined making it equal, save that of size, to the most costly hotels in any of the large cities.

The building rises to a height of four stories above the half basement, the upper lines being broken by a fanciful roof of gables and dormer windows, which makes the building resemble a fine large mansion more than it does a hotel. A veranda 16 feet wide and 268 feet long extends along the front and sides of the building which is treated in East Lake and Queen Anne designs, the ceiling being painted a light sky blue, which harmonizes perfectly with the deep red of the brick of which the walls are constructed. A short flight of steps give approach to the central portion of the veranda in front, upon which the office and rotunda opens through wide doors of polished cherry. When entering the lobby, the Tennessee marble counter surmounted at one end by a handsome cherry desk, is in full view of the entrance to the parlor and the gentlemen’s reading room. Immediately beyond the latter is the billiard room across the hall from the lunch room and saloon designed for guests of the hotel. Large open fire places welcome you upon entering the lobby, parlors and dining room.

The furniture of the parlor is made of solid mahogany and upholstered with heavy Maroon velvet plush. The dining room is immediately across the hall from the parlor and is L shaped. The original portion of the hotel had 50 sleeping rooms, a dining room, a billiard room barber shop, separate men’s and women’s parlors and the only bar in Pullman City. The building was originally lighted with gas lights and heated with steam radiators, the steam generated by the Corliss Engine located across the street in the factory buildings.

The first floor and the Pullman Suite were trimmed with cherry woodwork and accented by multicolored stained glass windows. On the second floor, the Pullman Suite was kept for George Pullman when he visited the factory and town as the Pullman family lived in the fashionable Prairie Avenue District, just south of downtown.

The second through the fourth floors housed the hotel rooms and suites. Each floor, similar to train cars, provided a different “class” of service. The more elegant and expensive rooms were located on the second floor, where they were closer to the lobby. These rooms were outfitted with Eastlake furniture and included larger suite layouts. The rooms on the third and fourth floors were smaller and furnished in different styles on each floor.

The hotel was off limits to Pullman workers. George Pullman did not want his laborers to drink and banned the sale of alcohol within town limits. An exception was made for guests of the Hotel Florence, however. A bar served whiskey and other beverages inside the hotel. The hotel restaurant specialized in pork chops which were featured on the hotel menu in 1902.

The Historic Pullman Foundation bought the Hotel Florence in 1975 to save the aging building from demolition and to renovate it. In 1991, it was sold to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as an integral part of the Pullman State Historic Site. The Hotel is open for tours and special events.

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” is Available

My eighth hotel history book features twelve architects who designed 94 hotels from 1878 to 1948: Warren & Wetmore, Henry J. Hardenbergh, Schultze & Weaver, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Bruce Price, Mulliken & Moeller, McKim, Mead & White, Carrere & Hastings, Julia Morgan, Emery Roth, Trowbridge & Livingston, George B. Post and Sons.

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl

Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.237

ABOUT STANLEY TURKEL

Stanley Turkel was designated as the 2014 and the 2015 Historian of the Year by Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This award is presented to an individual for making a unique contribution in the research and presentation of hotel history and whose work has encouraged a wide discussion and a greater understanding and enthusiasm for American History.

Turkel is the most widely-published hotel consultant in the United States. He operates his hotel consulting practice serving as an expert witness in hotel-related cases, provides asset management and hotel franchising consultation. He is certified as a Master Hotel Supplier Emeritus by the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com/917-628-8549

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Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 220: Hotel History: The Heathman Hotel

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 220: Hotel History: The Heathman Hotel

Stanley Turkel | October 02, 2019

Hotel History: The Heathman Hotel

The original Heathman Hotel was built in 1926 one block from the current structure by George Heathman for $1 million. Because of the success of the original hotel, Heathman immediately started construction of a new 10-story concrete structure designed by the architectural firm of DeYoung and Raold. The New Heathman Hotel was designed in the Jacobean Revival style and was Portland’s largest construction project to that date. When it opened, Governor I. L. Patterson and Mayor George Luis Baker made dedication speeches while radio station KOIN featured a live band. The Oregon Journal described the Heathman Hotel as “Portland’s newest and most modern hotel. Its planning, construction and general appointments are as modern as human ingenuity and talent could possibly make it.”

Because it was located on Portland’s “Great White Way”, ablaze with theatre marquees, restaurants and shops, it became the focal point of downtown’s entertainment center.

George Heathman died at age 49, less than three years after the new Heathman Hotel was opened. His wife, Katherine and their two children remained active and retained an interest in the operations until Harry Heathman, George’s son, passed away in 1962.

By the 1950s, most of the commercial and retail establishments left downtown Portland for the suburbs. It was not until the late 1960s that city leaders sought to convince major retail stores to resume operating down town. In addition, the city created a performing arts center in the old Paramount Theatre which had originally opened as the Portland Public Theatre. It was designed by the Chicago-based architectural firm of Rapp & Rapp in Italian Rococo Revival style in 1928. It was renamed the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in 1984 and redesigned by ELS Architects.

The Heathman Hotel’s public spaces were remodeled by Portland architect Carter Case and interior designer Andrew Delfino including the eucalyptus-paneled Tea Court. A 100-year-old crystal chandelier from the U.S. Embassy in Czechoslovakia was installed in the Tea Court.

On April 17, 2019, Conde Nast’s Traveler featured the Heathman Hotel as the hotel of the week:

Built in 1927, this much-loved Portland landmark, elevated to international stardom by its cameo in the steamy 2011 bestseller 50 Shades of Grey, got a fashionable facelift earlier this year, and those used to its old-money library will either love or hate the 10-story historic hotel’s bright and stylish refresh. What hasn’t changed are the opulently costumed doormen, prime downtown location (next door to the popular Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall), and robust Russian-themed afternoon tea in the luxe downstairs tea court. After a day of shopping, museum-hopping, or hiking in nearby Washington Park, pluck a good book off the lobby library shelf, secure a spot on the blue velvet sofa by the fireplace, and order a dozen oysters and a bottle of Sancerre from James Beard Award—winning chef Vitaly Paley’s onsite restaurant, Headwaters.

Sounds lovely. Who’s staying here?
Weekend wanderers, wedding parties, honeymooners, and 50 Shades of Grey superfans.

Tells us everything about the rooms.
The 151 guest rooms are beautifully redone in white, gray and sea blues, with bright white wooden wall panels at the head of each bed, elegant bar carts, plump cozy chaises, pretty blue-and-white patterned throws, and locally produced Water Avenue Coffee and Steven Smith teas. If you want space to spread out, book a Corner King Room; it’s nearly 500 square feet, with a leather lounger in the sitting area and plenty of natural light.

Any stand-out features or services?
The all-local honor bar sports wee bottles of Burnside Bourbon, fig vinegar sourced from Red Ridge Farms in the Willamette Valley, and Sourdough and Olive Oil bars by Portland chef turned chocolatier David Briggs of Xocolatl de Davíd. Feel like a pint of Salt & Straw’s Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons in bed while you catch up onThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Whether it’s 9 p.m. or 9a.m., room service will deliver it with a spoon—and a smile.

What’s the deal with food and drink?
Upon check-in, choose a pint of Oregon craft beer or glass of wine, and mark your calendar for 5 p.m. when the hotel hosts a complimentary spirits hour featuring a craft cocktail of the day. Headwaters, James Beard Award—winning chef Vitaly Paley’s seafood restaurant, serves three solid meals a day, but you’re in the center of one of the most exciting food cities in the country, so get out and about.

Any thoughts about the hotel’s facilities?
You’ll be eating well and often during your Portland stay, so best take advantage of the hotel’s small but mighty gym, with its mini rock-climbing wall, punching bag, and live-streaming Peloton bikes. If leaving the room isn’t part of your workout, order a Well-Fit Kit, equipped with a Manduka yoga mat, barrel bands, weights and core ball, and workout-video loaded iPad. The hotel also has discounted and complimentary passes to local fitness studios; just stop by the front desk.

What’s the bottom line?
The Heathman is a fresh-faced piece of authentic Portland history with the perfect downtown location, lots of local amenities, and the library of your dreams.

The Heathman Hotel has been a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation since 1991. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” is Available

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.103

ABOUT STANLEY TURKEL

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com/917-628-8549

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Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 219: Hotel History: Josh Billings on Hotels One Hundred and Forty-Eight Years Ago

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 219: Hotel History: Josh Billings on Hotels One Hundred and Forty-Eight Years Ago

Stanley Turkel | September 11, 2019

Hotel History: Josh Billings on Hotels One Hundred and Forty-Eight Years Ago

Josh Billings was the pen name of the 19^th century American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw (1818-1885). He was a famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States during the latter half of the 19^th century. He is often compared to Mark Twain.

Shaw was born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts. His father, Henry Shaw, served in the United States House of Representatives from 1817 and his grandfather, Samuel Shaw, also served in the Congress from 1808-1813.

Shaw attended Hamilton College but was expelled in his second year for removing the clapper of the campus bell. Shaw worked as a coal miner, farmer and auctioneer before becoming a journalist in 1858. Under the pseudonym “Josh Billings”, he wrote humorous columns in the slang of the day often with eccentric phonetic spellings dispensing folksy wit and humor:

Josh Billings on Hotels

New Albany Weekly Ledger, New Albany, Indiana

March 22, 1871:

“I don’t know of any business more flattersome than the tavern business. There don’t seem to be anything to do but to stand in front of the register with a pen behind the ear, and see that the guests enter the house, then tell John to show the gentleman to 976, and then take four dollars and fifty cents next morning from the devil of traveller, and let him went.

This seem to be the whole thing (and it is the whole thing) in most cases.

You will discover the following description a mild one of about nine hotels out of ten between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, across the United States in a straight line.

Your room is 13 foot 5 inches, by 9 foot 7 inches, parallelogramly. It being court week (as usual), all the good rooms are employed by the lawyers and judges.

Your room is on the uttermost floor.

The carpet is ingrain – ingrained with the dust, kerosene oil, and ink spots of four generations.

There is two pegs in the room to hitch coats onto; one of them broke off, and the other pulled out and missing.

The bureau has three legs and one brick.

The glass on the bureau swings on two pivots, which have lost their grip.

There is one towel on the rack, thin but wet.

The rain water in the pitcher came out of the well.

The soap is as tough to wear as a whetstone. The soap is scented with cinnamon oil and variegated with spots.

There is three chairs, cane setters; one is a rocker, and all three is busted.

There is a match safe – empty.

There is no curtain to the window, and there don’t want to be any; you can’t see out, and who can see in?

The bell-rope is come off about six inches this side of the ceiling.

The bed is a modern slat-bottom, with two mattresses – one cotton and one husk, and both harder and about as thick as a sea biscuit.

You enter the beds sideways, and can feel every slat at once as is you could the ribs of a gridiron.

The bed is inhabited.

You sleep some, but roll over a good deal.

For breakfast you have a gong, and Rio coffee too cold to melt butter; fried potatoes, which resemble chips that a two-inch auger makes in its journey through an oak log.

Bread, solid; beefsteak, about as thick as a blister plaster, and as tough as a hound’s ear. Table covered with plates, a few scared to death pickles on one of them, and six fly-indorsed crackers on the other.

A pewterinkum castor with three bottles in it, one without any pepper in it, one without any mustard, and one with two inches of drowned flies and some vinegar in it.

Servant girl, with hoops on, hangs around you earnestly, and wants to know it you want another cup of coffee.

You say, “No, ma’am, I thank you,” and push back your chair. You haven’t eat enough to pay for picking your teeth.”

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” is Available

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.Download Nulled WordPress Themes Download Best WordPress Themes Free Download Download WordPress Themes Download Premium WordPress Themes Free free download udemy paid course69

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 218; Hotel History: Raymond Orteig and Charles Lindbergh

Posted on September 4, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 218; Hotel History: Raymond Orteig and Charles Lindbergh

August 20, 2019

(Original Caption) Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh and Raymond Orteig posed together at Hotel Brevport here after Lindy had received the $25,000 Orteig prize for first nonstop flight from New York to Paris.

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: Raymond Orteig and Charles Lindbergh

Raymond Orteig (1870-1934) was the New York City hotel owner who offered the $25,000 Orteig Prize to the first aviator to fly between New York City and Paris.

In 1919, Raymond Orteig, a practically unknown New York City hotel owner, issued an extraordinary challenge to the fledgling flying world. Enthralled by tales of pioneer aviators, the French-born Orteig, who owned the Brevoort and Lafayette Hotels in New York City, offered a purse of $25,000 to be awarded to “the first aviator who shall cross the Atlantic in a land or water aircraft (heavier than air) from Paris or the shores of France to New York, or from New York to Paris without a stop.”

Orteig said his offer would be good for five years, but five years came and went without anyone accomplishing this feat. No one even tried. In 1926, Orteig extended the term of his offer for another five years. This time around, however, aviation technology had advanced to a point where some thought that it might, indeed, be possible to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. Charles A. Lindbergh was one who thought it could be done, but few people believed that this obscure mail pilot had any chance of collecting Orteig’s $25,000 prize.

Born in France, Raymond Orteig emigrated to the United States in 1882. He began a career in the hotel and restaurant business and eventually became the maitre d’ at the Lafayette Hotel in New York City, which was located not far from the Brevoort Hotel in Greenwich Village. In 1902, he purchased the Brevoort, which was known for its basement café. Comprising three adjoining houses on Fifth Avenue between 8^th and 9^th Street, the Brevoort had gained a reputation in the late 19^th century as a stopping place for titled Europeans. The Brevoort Café’s French menu, enriched by Orteig’s yearly wine-buying trips to France attracted an illustrious crowd of Greenwich Village artists and writers. Among them was the popular Mark Twain who took up residence between 1904 and 1908 in the Gothic-revival town house located on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 9^th Street. (That house had been built in 1870 by James Renwick, architect of nearby Grace Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, completed in 1878.) In 1954, the entire block, including the hotel and Mark Twain’s townhouse, was razed to make way for the 19-story Brevoort apartment building.

“Lucky Lindy” and the Spirit of St. Louis landed at Curtis Field on Long Island from California on May 12, 1927. En route, pilot and plane set a new record for the fastest United States transcontinental flight. Eight days later, Lindbergh took off for Paris from New York’s Roosevelt Field. Fighting fog, icing, and sleep deprivation, Lindbergh landed safely at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 10:22 PM on May 20, 1927 – and a new aviation hero was born. The plane had carried him over 3,600 miles in under 34 hours and won the $25,000 Orteig prize.

The first trans-Atlantic flight heralded the “Lindbergh Boom” in aviation. Aircraft industry stocks rose in value, and interest in flying skyrocketed. During Lindbergh’s subsequent U.S. tour and goodwill flight to Central and South America, the flags of the nations he visited were painted on the cowling of his plane. At the invitation of Chief Executive Officer Juan Trippe, he then joined Pan Am World Airways. Trippe recalled that he was present at Roosevelt Field when Lindbergh started his history-making flight.

Conversely, Raymond Orteig is all but forgotten. His Lafayette Hotel (known as the Hotel Martin from 1863 to 1902, when Orteig acquired and rechristened it) was patronized by international celebrities who were drawn by its French food and service. When the Brevoort faltered in 1932 during the Great Depression (as did so many other hotels), Orteig sold it and nurtured the Lafayette through the depression. In 1953, the Lafayette was demolished for a modern apartment building, the six-story Lafayette Apartments at University Place and 9^th Street.

Advancing public interest and aviation technology, the Prize occasioned investments many times the value of the prize. In addition, lives were lost by men who were competing to win the prize. Six men died in three separate crashes. Another three men were injured in a fourth crash. During the spring and summer of 1927, 40 pilots attempted various long-distance over-ocean flights, leading to 21 deaths during the attempts. For example, seven lives were lost in August 1927 in the Orteig Prize-inspired $25,000 Dole Air Race to fly from San Francisco to Hawaii.

1927 saw a number of aviation firsts and new records. The record for longest flight distance, and longest overwater flight were set and all exceeded Lindbergh’s effort. However, no other flyer gained the fame that Lindbergh did for winning the Orteig Prize.

The Orteig Prize inspired the $10 million Ansari X Prize for repeated suborbital private spaceflights. Similar to the Orteig Prize, it was announced some eight years before it was won in 2004.

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” is Available

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.Free Download WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes Download Premium WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes udemy course download free

About Stanley Turkel

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com/917-628-8549

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Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 217, Hotel History: Catskill Mountain Resort Hotels

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 217, Hotel History: Catskill Mountain Resort Hotels

Stanley Turkel | July 30, 2019 109 Shares

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: Catskill Mountain Resort Hotels
This is the story of an area of 250 square miles, approximately an hour and a half drive northwest of New York City, which over the course of last century became a resort phenomenon unlike any other. The area had attracted tourists since the post-Civil War years because of its visual appeal and accessibility via two railroad lines, the Ontario & Western and the Ulster & Delaware. The new arrivals came up to the Catskill Mountains to settle, to farm, and to escape the unhealthy environment of urban tenement life.

The message came back to New York’s lower East Side: the air was clean and fresh, the scenery was beautiful, and the climate in July and August was cooler than the city. Farmhouses were converted into boarding houses to accommodate visitors seeking simple pleasures of fresh air, farm-fresh food, mountain vistas and a stroll down a shady lane.

These summer resorts in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties were called the “Borscht Belt” which attracted Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. These resorts were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews between the 1920s and 1970s. The hotels, bungalow colonies, summer camps and self-catered boarding houses were mostly frequented by families of middle and working class Jewish New Yorkers. Some of these Catskill hotels were converted from farms that immigrants had started in the early 1900s. The area catered specifically to Jewish families providing kosher foods, bedrooms and entertainment. Nearly all famous Jewish performers and comedians would hone their skills at these resorts including Sid Caesar, Woody Allen, Billy Crystal, Rodney Dangerfield, Gabe Kaplan, Jerry Seinfeld, Henry Youngman, Andy Kaufman, Buddy Hackett, Jerry Lewis, Joan Rivers and many others.

In its heyday, as many as 500 resorts catered to guests of various incomes. Some of the larger hotels had producers such as Moss Hart at the Flagler, Neil Simon at the Taminent. They performed scenes from Kingsley’s Dead End or Odets’ Waiting For Lefty or musicals like the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union’s Pins and Needles. Staff members would sing selections from The Barber of Seville or Pagliacci.

Famous prize fighters Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston and Muhammed Ali trained there. Millions of tourists, especially New Yorkers, swam in the lakes and oversized swimming pools and chose to ski or ice skate, to take lessons in tennis and golf. The best known resorts were The Concord, Grossinger’s, The Nevele (“Eleven” spelled backwards), Brickman’s, Kutcher’s, Friar Tuck Inn, Gilbert’s, the Woodbine Hotel, the Tamareck Lodge, the Raleigh, and the Pines Resort.

Two of the larger hotels in High View (north of Bloomingburg) were the Shawanga Lodge and the Overlook. In 1959, the Shawanga hosted a conference that marked the beginning of serious research into lasers. The hotel burned to the ground in 1973. The Overlook had entertainment and summer lodging through the late 1960s and was operated by the Schrier family. It included a main building and about 50 other bungalows, plus a five-unit cottage just across the street.

The New York, Ontario & Western Railway carried passengers to the resort from Weehawken, New Jersey, until 1948. The railroad was abandoned in 1957.

The decline of the Catskills resorts was apparent as early as 1965. Entertainment in America was changing as the country ushered in the jet age. As ethnic barriers in the U.S. began to fall and travel to distant resorts became easier and cheaper, fewer Jewish American families in New York City went to the Catskills. By the early 1960s, between a quarter and a third of Grossinger’s annual visitors were non-Jewish. Even the universalization of air-conditioned hotels across America drew customers away from the aging resorts primarily built before this innovation became common. In the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, traditional resort vacations lost their appeal for many younger adults.

Smaller, more modest hotels such as Youngs Gap and the Ambassador found themselves in a niche with a vanishing clientele and closed by the end of the 1960s. By the mid-1990s, nearly 300 hotels and motels had gone out of business in Sullivan County.

The 1970s took a toll on more lavish establishments such as the Flagler and The Laurels. In 1986 Grossinger’s closed for renovations, and the work was never completed by new owners. Grossinger’s largest historic rival (and the largest of all the Borscht Belt resorts), the Concord, benefitted only temporarily, filing for bankruptcy in 1997 and closing a year later.

Long-delayed plans are now being implemented by those who purchased the Concord Resort Hotel and Grossinger’s to work with local Native Americans to bring gambling to the region. Because the Borscht Belt’s prime market has long passed and many of the resorts are abandoned, developers believe that the only way to revitalize the region is by attracting guests to world-class casinos and resorts such as those in New Jersey and Connecticut.

On February 8, 2018, the Resorts World Catskills Casino opened in the heart of the old “Borscht Belt” in Monticello, New York about 80 miles northwest of New York City. It features an 18-story hotel, 150 table games and 2,150 slot machines. The casino will be the cornerstone of a $1.2 billion resort complex that will include an entertainment village, an indoor waterpark lodge and an 18-hole golf course Charles A. Degliomini, executive vice president of Resorts World Catskills said, “With our opening, we look forward to driving tourism to the Catskills, stimulating the economy and making meaningful contributions that help put the Catskills back on the map as a premier getaway and true destination.”

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” is Available
My eighth hotel history book features twelve architects who designed 94 hotels from 1878 to 1948: Warren & Wetmore, Henry J. Hardenbergh, Schultze & Weaver, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Bruce Price, Mulliken & Moeller, McKim, Mead & White, Carrere & Hastings, Julia Morgan, Emery Roth, Trowbridge & Livingston, George B. Post and Sons.

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.Download Best WordPress Themes Free Download Download WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes udemy course download free

About Stanley Turkel

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com/917-628-8549

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Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 216: Hotel History: Ellsworth M. Statler

Posted on July 14, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 216: Hotel History: Ellsworth M. Statler

July 09, 2019

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: Ellsworth M. Statler

In 1950, the hotel industry named Ellsworth Milton Statler “Hotel Man of the Half Century”, even though he had been dead for 22 years. Statler’s impact on inn-keeping was so great, no one else even came close.

While many considered Statler the premier hotel figure, he was not a typical executive. A plain, rugged man who started to work at the age of nine, he continued to wear twenty dollar suits and four dollar shoes even after he became successful, and resembled Will Rogers more than Rudolph Valentino.

When Statler began in the hotel business, the following practices were commonplace:

Some hotels embarrassed non-paying male guests by cutting off their trousers at the knees and making them parade in the lobby with sandwich signs that proclaimed them as “deadbeats.”
One hotel forbade guests from spitting on the carpets, lying in bed with their boots on, or driving nails into the furniture.
Even the better hotels had shared bathroom facilities. Bathtubs were usually built on a platform, and hot water cost 25 cents extra.
About 90 percent of hotels were American plan, with cheap, unlimited food included in the room rate.
Smoking was usually not permitted in dining rooms, bars barred women, and wine and beer sold better than liquor.
Rooms were heated with stoves or open fireplaces. Signs reminded guests not to blow out the gas jets.
No hotel owner called his house full until all double beds were fully occupied, often by complete strangers. Talk about yield management.

Statler was more interested in comfort in his hotels than fancy trimmings. “A shoe salesman and a traveling prince want essentially the same thing when they are on the road – good food and a comfortable bed – and that is what I propose to give them,” he said. To counter criticism that his hotels were not luxurious enough, Statler said, “I could run a so-called luxury hotel or a resort hotel that would beat any damn thing those frizzly-headed foreigners are doing, but I just don’t operate in that field. All I want to do is to have more comforts and conveniences and serve better food than any of them have or do, and mine will be at a price ordinary people can afford.”

Statler was born on a farm near Gettysburg, PA on October 26, 1863, the son of William Jackson Statler and Mary Ann McKinney. When he was young, the family moved to Bridgeport, Ohio across the Ohio River from Wheeling, West Virginia. Statler and his brothers worked hard and hot at the La Belle Glass Factory in Kirkwood, OH, tending glory holes, small furnaces used to heat and soften glass so it could be formed into bottles or other products. Statler landed in the hotel field as a nighttime bell-boy at the McLure House Hotel in Wheeling.

At 15, Statler who had begun work at $6 a month, board and tips, was promoted to head bellman. By the following year, Statler had learned how to keep accounting records, and at 19, he became hotel manager.

In 1878, the McLure House had an elevator, but it was reserved for guests and the manager. Bellboys had to use the stairs to carry luggage and guest necessities like hot water and kindling. Guestrooms were barely adequate, furnished only with a bed, a chair, and a large clothing hook on the door. Apparently, the McLure’s saloon was more in tune with guest needs, offering a free lunch buffet consisting of cold meats, hard-boiled eggs and rye bread. A large painting of a nude female hung over the bar.

Enterprising and innovative, Statler leased the hotel’s billiard room and railroad ticket concession and made them profitable. He got help from an unexpected source: younger brother Osceola had developed an amazing talent for billiards. Osceola’s fame brought people to the hotel to watch the local champion defeat players from out-of-town. Statler bought out the company that ran the nearby, four-lane Musee Bowling Lanes, added four additional lanes and installed eight pool and billiard tables. He then organized a city-wide bowling tournament with a grand prize of $300 for the winning team.

“The Pie House” in the Musee building, served his mother’s pies, minced chicken and minced ham sandwiches on egg-shell china with quadruple-plated table silver. The place was so busy, that the pin boys in the bowling alleys had to spend their spare time cranking the ice-cream freezers.

The family business thrived with Osceola as manager of the billiard room; brother Bill had charge of the bowling lanes; mother Mary and sister Alabama turned out sandwiches and pies. As for Ellsworth, a $10,000 annual income allowed him to pursue his dream: to own and operate a 1,000-room hotel in New York City. Ultimately, he fulfilled it, following the old vaudeville line that to get to New York City, you had to go by way of Buffalo.

Statler used to go fishing with friends in the St. Clair River at Star Island in Canada. In 1894, on his way home, he stopped in Buffalo where he observed the Ellicott Square building under construction, billed as “the largest office building in the world”. He learned that management was looking for an operation for a large restaurant for $8,500 per year rental. Statler struck a deal to lease the space provided he could raise enough money to furnish a large restaurant. That summer, Statler also married Mary Manderbach, whom he had met in Akron eight years earlier. They moved to Buffalo, opening Statler’s Restaurant July 4, 1895 with fireworks and patriotic oratory.

Statler staked all on a convention of the Grand Army of the Republic that would bring thousands of Union Army veterans and their families to Buffalo. He widely advertised a menu offering “all you can eat for 25¢.” The quarter bought bisque of oysters, olives, radishes, fried smelts with tartar sauce and potatoes Windsor, lamb sauté Bordelaise with green peas, roast young duck with applesauce and mashed potatoes, Roman punch, fruit or vegetable salad with Russian dressing, cream layer cake, Metropolitan ice cream, coffee, tea or milk. What’s more, you could eat as much as you liked.

In 1907, Statler built and opened the 300-room Buffalo Statler, launching a chain of middle-class hotels that standardized comfort and cleanliness. Seeking a competitive edge, he designed the “Statler plumbing shaft.” This enabled bathrooms to be built back to back, providing two baths for little more than the price of one and allowing him to offer many private rooms with adjoining baths. Statler’s preoccupation with comfort and efficiency brought about the following innovations: ice water circulating to every bathroom, a telephone in every room, a full-sized closet with a light, a towel hook beside every bathroom mirror, a free morning newspaper, and a pin cushion with needle and thread. In 1922, at the Pennsylvania Statler in New York City, Statler introduced the Servidor, a bulging panel in the guestroom door where the guest hung clothes for cleaning or pressing. The valet could pick up and return them without entering the room. The Pennsylvania Statler also was the first hotel to offer complete medical services including an X-ray and surgical room, a night physician and a dentist.

Statler was also concerned about making certain staff focused on guest satisfaction. When he established his first hotel, he said “a hotel has just one thing to sell. That one thing is service. The hotel that sells poor service is a poor hotel. It is the object of the Hotel Statler to sell its guests the very best service in the world.”

Statler’s precepts eventually became the “Statler Service Code,” a formulation for employees the founder’s ideals. The code aroused so much interest that it was made available to guests and became a Statler tradition. Long before “empowerment” became a cliché, every Statler employee signed off on a pledge including these:

To treat our patrons and fellow employees in an interested, helpful, and gracious manner, as we would want to be treated if positions were reversed;
To judge fairly – to know both sides before taking action;
To learn and practice self-control;
To keep our properties- buildings and equipment- in excellent condition at all times;
To know our job and to become skillful in its performance;
To acquire the habit of advance planning;
To do our duties promptly; and
To satisfy all patrons or to take them to our superior.

Statler’s widow, Alice managed to keep the company solvent during the Depression. She ran Statler Hotel Co. until 1954, when she sold it to Hilton Hotels for $111 million, merging Statler’s 10,400 rooms with Hilton’s 16,200. That was the greatest hotel merger and largest private real estate deal in history up until that time.

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” Has Just Been Published

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.Download Premium WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes Download Best WordPress Themes Free Download free download udemy paid course

About Stanley Turkel

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com/917-628-8549

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 215: Hotel History: The TWA Hotel

Posted on July 1, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 215: Hotel History: The TWA Hotel

Stanley Turkel | June 19, 2019

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: The TWA Hotel (2019)
On May 15, 2019, New York’s spectacular new TWA Hotel opened at John F. Kennedy International Airport. At a cost of more than $250 million, two new hotel wings containing 512 guestrooms were built behind the landmark Trans World Airlines Flight Center designed by famed architect, Eero Saarinen which first opened in 1962.

Saarinen was born in 1910 in Finland and emigrated to the United States in 1923. He started his career with an apprenticeship with his father – the prolific Art Deco architect Eliel Saarinen – and went on to become one of the most important architects of the 20^th century. Working mainly in the U.S., he created many dramatically different structures:

The Kleinhaus Music Hall in Buffalo, N.Y. (1940)
This building was a father-son collaboration.
Cummins Inc. Irwin Conference Center, Columbus, Indiana (1954)
MIT Chapel, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1955)
Technical Center, Warren, Michigan (1956)
Miller House and Garden, Columbus, Indiana (1957)
Milwaukee County War Memorial Center
Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1957)
S. Embassy, London, England (1960)
Washington Dulles International Airport, Dulles, Virginia (1962)
CBS Building, New York, N.Y. (1965)
Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri (1965)

The TWA Flight Center terminal was one of several Saarinen projects completed after his death in 1961. This brilliant opus magnum took the shape of a large bird embodying a sense of fantasy and science fiction.

In 1994, the original TWA terminal was declared a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission which prevented its demolition. In 2005, the National Park Service listed it on the National Register of Historic Places.

In addition to the 512 guestrooms the two new buildings contain 50,000 square feet of meeting space, six restaurants, an aviation history museum, a rooftop infinity pool, an observation deck, a 10,000 square foot fitness center and a Lockheed Constellation L-1649A airliner transformed into a cocktail lounge. There are 4,000 parking spaces and an Air Train to other JFK terminals.

Travelers who are passing through JFK can choose a view of either the runway or the Saarinen landmark. The hotel’s website promises that the rooms are “ultra-quiet” thanks to thick glass walls. But it costs nothing to walk in and enjoy the dramatic interior of the original main terminal, now the hotel’s lobby.

Other amenities include Shinola and Warby Parker stores, an Intelligentsia Coffee location, and a restaurant by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

The hotel is full of period furniture designed by Warren Platner, Isamu Noguchi, and Raymond Loewy as well as Saarinen. The renovation team focused on design details so closely that it hired the graphic-design firm Pentagram to create a new custom typeface for the hotel, based on the lettering that Saarinen originally used in the terminal. Many of the TWA Flight Center’s original details, such as the ceramic floor tiles and the 486 variously-shaped window panels have been replaced with replicas of the originals. These details are intended to give the hotel a 1960s- era vibe along with brass lighting, walnut-accented furnishings and rotary phones. The large departure board, a split-flap display made in Italy by the Solari Company which has been a feature of the building since the Flight Center’s opening in 1962, was fully restored as part of the hotel project.

The current project is a public-private partnership between MCR and Morse Development, Jet Blue and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It was privately funded with no government subsidies. The re-creation, overseen by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, not only turned the historic terminal into a hotel lobby but added two wings (designed by Brooklyn-based Lubrano Ciavarra Architects) for the property’s guestrooms and a 50,000 square foot events center. The most important element of the projects design, said Ciavarra, was respecting the symmetrical design of the Saarinen building as 21^st century elements were added. “Visitors and guests to the hotel will be able to enjoy the experience of the Saarinen building as it was originally designed and then move through the flight tubes into our new hotel buildings.”

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” Has Just Been Published
My eighth hotel history book features twelve architects who designed 94 hotels from 1878 to 1948: Warren & Wetmore, Henry J. Hardenbergh, Schultze & Weaver, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Bruce Price, Mulliken & Moeller, McKim, Mead & White, Carrere & Hastings, Julia Morgan, Emery Roth, Trowbridge & Livingston, George B. Post and Sons.

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:
For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.Download Best WordPress Themes Free Download Download Nulled WordPress Themes Free Download WordPress Themes Download Best WordPress Themes Free Download udemy paid course free download

About Stanley Turkel

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com/917-628-8549

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 214: Hotel History: Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo, Egypt

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 214: Hotel History: Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo, Egypt

June 5, 2019 12:42pmShare This Link on Facebook Share This on Twitter Share This on Google+Share

Hotel History: Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo, Egypt (1841)

Shepheard’s Hotel history goes back 178 years when it was originally built by Englishman Samuel Shepheard in Cairo. It was originally named the “Hotel des Anglais” (English Hotel). Shepheard co-owned the hotel with a Mr. Hill who was Mohammed Ali Pasha’s head coachman. In 1845, Hill relinquished his interest in the hotel which Shepheard sold in 1861. Shepheard’s Hotel was known for its opulence, its famous guests and as a governmental base for the military. Its stained glass windows, Persian carpets, lavish gardens, terraces and great granite pillars were renowned throughout the Mideast and Europe. Its American bar was frequented not only by Americans but also by French and British officers. There were nightly dances with men in uniform and women in evening gowns. Richard Burton, a close friend of Shepheard, left a detailed description of his generous character and successful career, describing him as “a remarkable man in many points, and in all things the model “John Bull”. The Shepheards bar was known as the “long bar” because it was always jammed.

From 1937, Joe Scialom presided over the Long Bar at Shepheard’s. He worked in white jacket and black bowtie, spoke eight languages, and acted as banker, adviser, umpire and father confessor to his customers. During his tenure, the Long Bar was known as St. Joe’s Parish. He invented the Suffering Bastard, a potent mix that continues to be included in all good cocktail manuals. He served throughout World War II and the stories he could tell would really have made his book worth reading. Joe was tending the bar on a Saturday in 1952 when the hotel burned down. He left Egypt in 1956 and continued working as a barman in the United States. His final job was at Windows on the World in the World Trade Center in New York before he finally retired in Florida.

In the late 19^th century, Cairo became a hub for international commerce, European tourists and travellers. The Shepheards Hotel provided a lofty view of Ibraham Pasha Street below. It was the center of many social and political events including the Grand Opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 when many international celebrities were invited to attend the ceremony.

Of all the world’s great hotels, only the Raffles in Singapore, the Peninsula in Hong Kong and the Vier Jahreszeiten in Hamburg could compare in glamour with Shepheards of this period.

The hotel had many notable guests including Aga Khan, the Maharajah of Jodhpur, Winston Churchill, explorer Henry Morton Stanley, Field Marshall Herbert Kichener, T.E. Laurence, Theodore Roosevelt, the Prince of Wales and many more. It was portrayed in the 1934 British film The Camels are Coming. The hotel is the setting for a number of scenes in the 1996 film The English Patient as well as The Grand Hotel des Bains in Venice Lido, Italy. The hotel was used as a base of operations in The Race Colonization series by Harry Turtledove, as a location in Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, and is mentioned in Anthony Trollope’s short-story, An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids (1861). It was also featured regularly in Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody novels.

On January 26, 1952 the hotel was totally destroyed during the Cairo Fire and the anti-British riots that led to the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.

The current Shepheards Hotel was erected in 1957 by Egyptian Hotels Ltd. about half a mile from the site of the original hotel. It is owned by the Egyptian General Company for Tourism and Hotels and operated by the Rocco Forte Company.

Disclosure: When Loews Hotels acquired New York’s Drake Hotel in 1965, I was hired as the General Manager. At that time, the most famous and successful discotheque in Manhattan was Shepheard’s at the Drake which was open seven days a week for cocktails, dinner and supper with continuous dancing from 7:30 PM to 3AM. Luncheon was served Monday through Friday and special brunch on Sunday from noon to 4PM. At lunch in Shepheards there were fashion shows and, for some years, at noon time, a talk radio program on WNBC featuring the Metropolitan Opera’s Mimi Benzell as hostess with famous guests. I often filled in for guests who failed to show up.

We printed and distributed a card entitled, “How to Do the Newest Discotheque Dances at Shepheard’s in New York’s Drake Hotel” with step-by-step instructions to dance the Jerk, Watusi, Frug and the Monkey. Killer Joe Piro’s party was regular feature at Shepheard’s. The discotheque was so successful that patrons lined up on 56^thStreet and around the corner on Park Avenue to wait (even on the winter’s coldest nights) to be admitted where they paid a hefty cover charge to dance to disco music.

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” Has Just Been Published

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-seven years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.

Tags: stanley turkel, stan turkel, hotel history, nobody asked me

About Stanley Turkel

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com / 917-628-8549

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 212: Hotel History: Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, California (1888)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 211: Hotel History: Asian American Hotel Owners Association*

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 210: Hotel History: John Q. Hammons (1919-2013)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 209: Hotel History: The Americana of New York (1962)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 208: Hotel History: Grand Hotel (1887) Mackinac Island, Michigan

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 207: Hotel History in Brooklyn, N.Y.: Hotel Bossert (1909) and St. George Hotel (1885)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 206: Hotel History: Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 205: Hotel History: Frederick Henry Harvey

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 204: Hotel History: The Skirvin Hotel, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1911) Part 2

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 203: Hotel History: The Skirvin Hotel, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (225 Rooms)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 202: Hotel History: Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 201: Hotel History: Architect Morris Lapidus

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 213: Hotel History: Sheraton’s Classic Advertising Campaigns

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 213: Hotel History: Sheraton’s Classic Advertising Campaigns

May 14, 2019 2:36pmShare This Link on Facebook Share This on Twitter Share This on Google+Share

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: “Keyed-Up Executives Unwind at Sheraton”

In 1965, the Sheraton Corporation of America, under the leadership of President Ernest Henderson, created a brilliant advertising campaign: “Keyed-up Executives Unwind at Sheraton”. It was broadly promoted all over the U.S. in print media, TV advertising and locally by individual Sheraton Hotels. Among my collection of Sheraton artifacts is a translucent plexiglass paperweight which has a small figure of a businessman with a wind-up key in his back which says “Keyed-Up Executives Unwind at Sheraton”.

His picture was everywhere: on television, on posters, in airports and railroad stations, on leaflets, matchbooks, cocktail stirrers, in newspaper ads. He was an inspired creation of Madison Avenue– a fictional character with whom millions could subconsciously identify. Young and clean-cut, he carried an attached case, glanced at his watch and looked like a businessman scurrying to his next appointment. He had, however, an enormous protuberance on his back. For sticking out from between his shoulder blades was a great, butterfly-shaped key of the type used to wind up mechanical toys. The text that accompanied his picture urged keyed-up executives to “unwind” and slow down at Sheraton hotels. This wound-up man-on-the-go was, and apparently still is, a potent symbol of millions who feel just as driven and harried as if they, too, had a huge key in their back.

A typical Sheraton printed ad of that time read:

“Next time you’re on the road, all keyed-up from “turnpike tension”, ease up to a Sheraton Motor Inn. Then unwind. Enjoy a great meal, a quiet air-conditioned room, TV, swimming pool. Plus many other Sheraton extra values such as Free Parking (anyplace, anytime) and Family Plan (children share your room free). Call us for Insured Reservations at Guaranteed Rates.
Keyed-Up Executives unwind at Sheraton.”

The campaign was eye-catching, clever, humorous and effective. It continued as Sheraton’s brand identification until 1968 when the International Telegraph & Telephone acquired the Sheraton Corporation of America. Soon thereafter, I was hired by IT&T and became the worldwide Product Line Manager for Hotel & Motel Operations to help oversee the management and expansion of Sheraton.

Hotel History: The Magic of 800-325-3535

In 1968, after IT&T acquired the Sheraton Corporation of America, Sheraton needed a new advertising program after the highly-successful “Keyed-up Executives Unwind at Sheraton” campaign. In the spring of 1969, IT&T President Harold Geneen was touring the Sheraton Boston Hotel when the Sheraton Director of Marketing William Morton began to describe the Sheraton new Reservation system. Geneen thought that IT&T could be the first to create a national single 800 number watts line to replace the 200 phone numbers that Sheraton listed nationwide. With the help of IT&T’s expert telephone technicians, the new system was created and implemented. Perhaps the greatest problem facing Sheraton was picking one unforgettable number. With the advice of telephone company psychologists, Morton settled on the number 800-325-3535. Why? Because it was easy to dial. When area codes were introduced to speed the calling of long-distance numbers, telephones had rotary dials. The nearest digit to the dialing stopper, and thus the digit that could be dialed the quickest was 1. Next came 2 and then 3. The psychologist selected 2, 3 and 5 because they were quick to dial and in a sequence that was easy to remember.

By the winter of 1970, the new 800 number was on-line and the new advertising campaign broke with saturation TV, full-page magazine ads and steady repetition of “eight, oh, oh, three-two-five, three-five, three-five.” The number was set to a catchy tune created by BBD&O which was recorded by the Boston Pops. A singing dog performed it on Johnny Carson’s TV show, it was cocktail-lounge background music in a TV drama and it was played at skating rinks. The reservations flowed into the Sheraton Reservation Centers in ever-increasing numbers, breaking records every month.

At one of ITT’s General Managers Meetings in New York where 80 executives gathered monthly to report on the performance of ITTs many companies, I reported about the extraordinary success of the ever-increasing number of reservations pouring into the Sheraton central Reservation offices. ITT President Harold Geneen responded, “I don’t think that anyone will remember that number. I can’t ever remember it. “I replied, Mr. Geneen, How many secretaries do you have?” “Nine.” “When was the last time you made a hotel reservation for yourself?” “I can’t recall”. I replied “No wonder you can’t remember 800-325-3535. You never use it yourself. Thank goodness, the rest of the business world needs to call it themselves and therefore remembers 800-325-3535.” The GMM attendees cracked up and gave me an ovation.

If you wonder how such an exchange could take place without losing my job, don’t forget that I was the Product Line Manager for Hotel Operations, an invention of Geneen. The concept was brilliant in several ways. Since PLM’s had no P&L responsibility, we could not issue orders to the line. Nevertheless, we were empowered to go anywhere, look at everything, speak to anyone and provide answers and opportunities. We relayed our recommendations to the President’s office where Harold Geneen would review them. One thing you learned fast was that he hated “Yes-Men”. He thrived on cheerful conflict.

My New Book, “Great American Hotel Architects” Has Just Been Published

My eighth hotel history book features twelve architects who designed 94 hotels from 1878 to 1948: Warren & Wetmore, Schultze & Weaver, Julia Morgan, Emery Roth, McKim, Mead & White, Henry J. Hardenbergh, Carrere & Hastings, Mulliken & Moeller, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Trowbridge & Livingston, George B. Post and Sons.

You can order copies from the publisher AuthorHouse by posting “Great American Hotel Architects” by Stanley Turkel.

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-six years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 40 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call me at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.

Tags: stanley turkel, stan turkel, hotel history, nobody asked me, brand news

About Stanley Turkel

Contact: Stanley Turkel

stanturkel@aol.com / 917-628-8549

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 212: Hotel History: Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, California (1888)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 211: Hotel History: Asian American Hotel Owners Association*

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 210: Hotel History: John Q. Hammons (1919-2013)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 209: Hotel History: The Americana of New York (1962)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 208: Hotel History: Grand Hotel (1887) Mackinac Island, Michigan

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Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 205: Hotel History: Frederick Henry Harvey

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 204: Hotel History: The Skirvin Hotel, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1911) Part 2

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 203: Hotel History: The Skirvin Hotel, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (225 Rooms)

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 202: Hotel History: Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 212: Hotel History: Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, CA

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 212: Hotel History: Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, California (1888)

April 23, 2019 2:48pmShare This Link on Facebook Share This on Twitter Share This on Google+Share

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, California *

The renowned Hotel del Coronado is a grand example of elegant Victorian architecture providing one of the most beautiful and popular beach resorts in the United States.

The Del was conceived by two mid-western businessmen, Elisha Babcock, Jr. and Hampton L. Story who bought the entire undeveloped 4,100 acres on the peninsula of Coronado for $110,000. Babcock was a retired railroad executive from Evansville, Indiana and Story the owner of the Story & Clark Piano Company in Chicago.

Babcock and Story hired the architectural firm of Reid & Reid consisting of James W. Reid (1851-1943), Merrit J. Reid (1855-1932) and Watson E. Reid (1858-1944) who were based in Evansville, Indiana. Upon arriving in Coronado, James Reid said, “The next day, such a one as may be found only in Coronado in December, we all visited the beach. No finer location could have been found anywhere.”

Construction commenced in March 1887 with many unskilled Chinese workers who had to be trained on the job by master carpenters, plumbers and other craftsmen from San Francisco and Oakland. Babcock ultimately found enough workers to man the construction site twenty-four hours a day.

The shortage of lumber was solved with contracts for exclusive rights to all the raw lumber production of the Dolbeer & Carson Lumber Company of Eureka, California. Reid built planing mills, kilns, a metal shop and iron works on the site. To speed construction, Reid also installed water tanks, gravity flow sprinklers, two giant cisterns to store rainwater and the first oil furnace in a new hotel. The Mather Electric Company installed electric lighting, a world first. Bricks were fired in a kiln built nearby specifically for the project and rock from quarries in Temecula Canyon was provided by the San Diego Granite Company. Meanwhile, toilet seats were ordered from England, china from France, glassware from Belgium, 21,000 yards of carpet from Lowell, Massachusetts and wooden chairs from a furniture manufacturer in Boston. The hotel’s first general manager, John B. Seghere, had to double as an interior decorator.

Unfortunately, when the spectacular new Hotel del Coronado opened in February 1888, the southern California land boom collapsed. Babcock and Story secured additional funding from John D. Spreckels, Captain Charles T. Hinde, H.W. Mallett and Giles Kellogg. By 1890, Spreckels ultimately bought out both Babcock and Story. The Spreckels family retained ownership of “the Del” until 1948.

The original five-story structure remains intact and in full use along with two newer sections closer to the beach. The Crown Room is still regarded as one of the world’s monumental architectural structures with its high sugar pine ceiling held together only with wooden pegs. There are no nails or interior supports and for many years was considered the largest column-free room in the United States.

After brief periods of ownership by Robert A. Nordblom, Kansas City hotelier Barney Goodman and San Diego businessman John S. Alessio, Chicago-born M. Larry Lawrence became the owner in 1963. For the next twenty years, $40 million was spent repairing and replacing plumbing, electrical, heating, ventilation and cooking gas lines. Because the Del is the world’s largest wooden structure, Lawrence installed one of the most expensive Grinnell sprinkler systems to provide the utmost in fire safety. He also constructed the Grande Hall Convention Center to make the Del one of Southern California’s largest and most successful meeting and convention venues. The hotel is almost completely self-contained with the following back-of-the-house amenities: butcher shop, pastry bakery, upholstery and furniture shops; electrical, plumbing, machine shops; an in-house laundry and dry cleaning facility.

Lawrence was highly respected for his self-made financial success, but no accomplishment was more dear to him than his restoration of one of the world’s most beautiful historic landmarks, the grand dame of American seaside resorts – the Hotel del Coronado.

It is said that more celebrities of the arts, entertainment, sports and political worlds have visited the Hotel del Coronado than any other hotel resort in North America. Notable guests have included Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, King Kalakaua of Hawaii, Vincent Price, Babe Ruth, James Stewart, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn. More recently, guests have included Kevin Costner, Whoopi Goldberg, Gene Hackman, George Harrison, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey.

The following presidents have stayed at the hotel: Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

While the Del has been the location for many movies, perhaps the most famous was Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.

The Hotel del Coronado was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

In March 2016, Blackstone sold Strategic Hotels & Resorts to Anbang Insurance Group, a Beijing-based Chinese insurance company, in a $6.5 billion deal involving 16 luxury American hotel properties including the Hotel del Coronado. Fifteen of the sixteen were immediately transferred to Anbang. However, the sale of the Hotel del Coronado was held up because of concerns expressed by the federal inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign investors for possible national security risks. The agency was concerned about the hotel’s proximity to major Navy bases in San Diego. In October 2016 it was reported that the deal had fallen through and the hotel would remain in Blackstone’s ownership.

In August 2017, Hilton Hotels and Resorts took over the management of Hotel del Coronado as part of their Curio Collection.

*excerpted from my book “Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi” AuthorHouse 2017

“Great American Hotel Architects”

My Other Published Hotel Books

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

All of these books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title.

If You Need an Expert Witness:

For the past twenty-six years, I have served as an expert witness in more than 40 hotel-related cases. My extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving: