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.