The California
San Francisco, April 1, 1891.
California being one of the largest of these United States, the Californians thought that their chief city should have large hotels, so they built in San Francisco the Baldwin House, the Lick House, the Occidental and larger than any of these, the Palace Hotel, “larger than any hotel in existence,” it is claimed. Whether this claim is well founded or not, the Palace is large enough to suit the most extravagant American ideas. It occupies three acres of ground. It has seven hundred and fifty-five bedrooms; number of rooms all told, ten hundred and fifteen.
But with the growth of the State and the growth of culture and good taste, Californians and tourists from other States demanded something above and beyond mere size; and so a few months ago was erected “The California.” There are several “California Hotels” in San Francisco, in fact, an old house directly opposite the California now calls itself “The New California,” probably because the name is new. So many houses with names near alike give trouble to the Post-office people, but the title of the house of which I write is simply “The California.”
It is in a central and accessible part of the city—in Bush street, just off Kearney street, which runs nearly parallel with Market, being not far from the Chronicle building, which with its great clock tower running up hundreds of feet in the air, serves as a finger or sign-post from many parts of the city.
The front is of cedar-colored sandstone, and with its modern, low-arched entrances and high, round towers, is uncommonly pleasing to the eye. There are one hundred and forty rooms in the house, and it is nine stories high, the higher floors being most desirable. The light is better as you ascend, and the views from the windows across the bay and the Golden Gate are a constant delight. From my bedroom window I can plainly see the graceful movements of the white squadron, which, with the green hills in the far distance make a magnificent picture. The California was erected by “an estate,” and the estate considered not the expense. They started out with the idea to build a hotel as near perfection as possible, and they succeeded.
Every known precaution is taken against fire. It was the intention from the first to build a house as proof against fire as men, money and materials could make it. Scientists were consulted as to sanitation and plumbing, and to these points special thought and attention were given, Such luxurious fittings in marble and silver plate I have never seen surpassed, if equalled; not even in my recent ten-thousand-mile tour through the South and West, and I have visited hotels that cost all the way from one to three millions of dollars.
Instead of marble and brass, which are used so freely in large American hotels, rare and beautiful woods prevail in decorating the interior of the new house. The ground floor is finished in quartered oak, the second in bird’s-eye maple, the third and fourth in sycamore, the fifth and sixth in red birch, and the seventh, eighth and ninth in oak. The wood was cut, carved and polished especially for the building, and is of the most exquisitely beautiful grain.
Max O’Rell would be pleased. Printed rules are not posted on all the bedroom doors: it would be an act of vandalism to thrust a nail into hard wood of such high polish and beautiful grain. The furniture and carpets harmonize in colors and are very rich: there seems to have been no thought of economy. The bedrooms are furnished as you would furnish your own apartment, provided you had a large bank account. They only lack pictures, mantel ornaments and such dainty etceteras, as you find, for instance, in the bedrooms of Long’s Hotel in London, to give them a finished, homelike and elegant air.
Some idea as to the extent to which this wood decoration is carried, may be gained when it is told that the wood used to decorate the parlor and music-room cost six thousand dollars, and yet they are small apartments when compared, say, with those of the Windsor Hotel, New York.
The music-room adjoins the parlor, and is only separated from it by a pair of portières. It is circular, with a frescoed dome. It is only twenty-four feet in diameter; but a veritable bijou is this music-room. It has tables and a cabinet of onyx, pieces of statuary and bronze, two piano lamps and a pedestal upon which stands a vase decorated with scenes painted by a French artist. The vase itself is three feet high. There are two semi-circular upholstered recesses in this room curtained in front. Occasionally these recesses are put to a very good use. I have seen young couples, a modern Claude and Pauline, engaged in very close conversation behind the curtains, whispering “soft nothings” to each other. “Soft” without doubt were the words spoken, and, so far as I heard, they amounted to nothing.
In the central front wall of this room there is a window, and pendant in this window is a colored lamp in which electric light is continually burning. There are similar lamps hanging in each of the cozy recesses—the scene, with its Moorish surroundings, reminding you of an Oriental synagogue, in which there is a similar lamp, and in which, according to Jewish custom in public places of worship, the light is never allowed to go out. Of electric lamps, there are twenty-five hundred in the house.
There is a ladies’ waiting-room which is strictly reserved for ladies; there is a ladies’ billiard-room, as well as one for gentlemen; there is a banqueting-room for public dinners at the top of the house, and at the bottom of the house there are cellars which contain a stock of choice wines valued at twenty thousand dollars.
The European plan is gaining in popularity in this country. When you proceed to write your name on the register at the Palace Hotel the clerk asks, “European or American plan?” At the California no such question is propounded; it is kept entirely on the European plan.
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.