Grand Hotels: Reality and IllusionGrand Hotels is the fruit of the many years Elaine Denby has devoted to travels and visits throughout Europe, North America, the Near East and the Orient; it is a fascinating architectural and social history that covers the globe from the 1830s to the 1930s, but which also takes note of the most recent refurbishments. The styles of architecture and decor have varied enormously for grand hotels: a French Renaissance château manner for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the 1880s; a fantastic Moorish-style confection for the Tampa Bay on Florida's Gulf Coast (1891); Art Deco for Oliver Hill's seaside Midland Grand at Morecombe in England (1933). And the services available were equally stunning: Turkish baths, rifle-ranges, even a fleet of vintage Rolls-Royces at Hong-Kong's Peninsula. To keep this illusory world glittering, the reality had to run like clockwork, with managers like César Ritz, king of hoteliers, monitoring every detail from ballrooms to basement boilers. Grand Hotels explores every aspect of this all-but-vanished world of opulence, from the entrepreneurs, architects and designers who made it possible to the ambitious individuals and dynasties that kept it going. |
Contents
Acknowledgements | 7 |
Size and Grandeur in the United States | 33 |
Europe Burgeoning | 45 |
The Swiss Genius III | 111 |
Fin de Siècle | 137 |
Founded in Empires | 165 |
Journeys to the East | 197 |
Into the Twentieth Century | 221 |
Reality and Illusion | 289 |
296 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accommodation arcaded architect architectural Art Deco Art Nouveau attracted balconies ballroom Banff Springs Hotel bathrooms baths became bedrooms belle époque brick British Bruce Price building built Casino central centre César Ritz Charles Mewès Château Château Frontenac classical clientèle columns completed cornice courtyard cuisine decoration dining dining-room dome Empire English entrance Europe exterior façade fashionable fire floor France French George Grand Hotel guests hall historic Hotel Company Hôtel Ritz House Imperial interior later London Louis Lucerne luxury hotel manager marble Metropole Midland Monte Carlo neo-classical neo-Renaissance nineteenth century opened original Palace Hotel Paris pavilion pedimented plasterwork Prince public rooms railway hotel rebuilding restaurant Ritz's roof Royal Salon Savoy Second World Second World War social Springs St Moritz staircase Station Hotel stone storeys Street style Swiss theatre took town trade Victoria visitors wing winter garden Zürich