NAMES GIVEN TO PUBLIC LODGING HOUSES

Various names have been used to describe public lodgings. We have the hotel, hostel ,hostelry,inn, ordinary, and tavern - and in more recent times in America, the motel,boatel, and condotel have come onto the scene.

In English history the word inn, appears as the preferred term, although the line between inn and hotel is very thin, if it exists at all. Note that the word hotel is the same in English, French, Spanish, German, and in many other European languages as well. This would suggest that travelers, as they went from one country to another, from one language group to another, had need for a common, virtually universal word which would be understood by all when they sought a night's lodging —and that word was hotel.

The tavern, today refers to a bar or saloon in which alcoholic drinks are served, although in times past many taverns provided rooms as an additional service. Even today the word tavern may appear as a part of a name identifying a hospitality establishment. The inn, however, continues to be the more conventional term and it connotes the availability of food, drink, and lodging to most travelers.

The clearly American terms motel and boatel are strictly from the Twentieth Century. Motel, the earlier of the two, is obviously traceable to the growing use of the motor car on American roads and the need to provide accommodations which were convenient for the motorist. The exact source of this word is not certain, and it is likely that more or less simultaneous invention occurred. It is unlikely that other combinations of hotel and motor car would have emerged. Consider the absurdity of hotor,carhot, or, telcar; cartel might have emerged but for its use in English for another purpose. The simplicity of the term motel, in any case, rapidly took hold across the country; it was a term that seemed to "catch on" right away and was easily recognisable.

Boatel seemed a logical step with the word motel firmly entrenched. Along many of the nation's waterways, boaters may spend the night and park their vessels in slips which are something like automobile parking spaces under six feet of water! With boatel operators, the entertain­ment and sales efforts are directed toward the interests of boaters, and the boatel may sell anything from seasick pills to bilge pumps.

America's contribution to the lodging industry is not limited to the invention of the motel and boatel. In colonial days, the word ordinary was used to describe a public lodging. This word, now completely obsolete when used in this sense, referred to a rather special type of dwelling, and the first ones constructed served primarily as meeting places for the local citizens. The early inns were well located near centers of activity in seaport communities. Architecturally, they were modeled after the inns of the parent country, England.

 

THE COLONIAL AMERICAN LODGING SCENE

In pre-revolutionary America, colonial citizens journeyed by horse or foot from one community to another and used the ordinaries, or inns, along the route for accommodations. During the colonial era, traveling was an extremely rugged adventure, best undertaken by the hardiest of people. Perhaps a modern comparison would be with a traveler going deep into Baja California on a dirt and rock strewn path with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, seeking accommodations at various ranches located miles off the trans-peninsular highway. The road conditions must have been about the same, and the feeling that one gets with the guest-host relationship in an agrarian environment must be about the same as had been routinely experienced by colonial travelers. The Hi1ton with its rooftop swimming pool had not yet arrived on the scene.

 

AMERICA'S FIRST HOTELS

 

It wasn't until the 1790's that the word hotel appeared in early America. This word referred originally to the many places in France which were converted to hotels during and after the French Revolution, which occurred at about the same time as ours. Also, it is worth noting that the word hotel appears to be a contraction of the word hostel or hostelry which, in turn, is related to hospital and hospitality. All of these words historically have much in common. In this early revolu­tionary period many colonial inns and taverns become known as hotels, a word that lent some distinction or prestige to the establishment.

The first hotel in America may have been Kriger's Tavern of New York in 1642, later replaced in 1703 by the King's Arms. The City Hotel of New York is usually regarded as the first major hotel built solely as a hotel. It served the needs of some 30,000 inhabitants in New York when it was built in 1794. The City Hotel operated with more than seventy rooms and provided deluxe accommodations at a price of two dollars per night. These accommodations included a room, breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper. Here, you see, is the basis of our commonly used phrase "American Plan," meaning that the price of the room includes meals, as distinct from the "European Plan," which provides rooms only.

By 1800 it became clear that America was assuming a dynamic leadership in the business of inn keeping. This leadership was a natural result of Americans simply doing more traveling than did the Europeans; distances were greater, there were more new areas to visit, and the sense of mobility increasingly typified the American scene. As a result, the American traveler demanded more and more places to sleep and eat along the route of his travels. It was not long before fashionable hotels sprang up in Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Each city became fiercely competitive with its sister cities to outdo each other in providing places of luxury. Boston had its Exchange Coffee House; Philadelphia had its Mansion House; and Baltimore, using the same name as New York's leading hospitality establishment of the time, had its own City Motel..

 

POST-REVOLUTIONARY AMERICAN HOTELS

It was not until the Tremont House appeared on the scene in Boston in the 1820's, that any significant change was made in America's hospitality industry. The Tremont's architecture and services were revolutionary for the time. Isaiah Rogers, its designer, perhaps did more to influence hotel architecture than any other single person in American hotel history. The Tremont featured classic Greek lines with Grecian columns and a Doric entrance. The Tremont's innovations included single and double rooms. Each was equipped with a bowl, pitcher, and an Individual bar of soap. Rooms at The Tremont had individual locks. By the 1820's technology was sufficiently advanced to permit the fairly widespread use of gaslight, and' so the hotel provided this luxury in its public rooms. It is very likely that the bellboy found his first job at the Tremont.

A highly innovative "first" was Rogers' installation of eight indoor bathrooms on the Tremont's ground floor and eight bathing rooms in the basement. In a society accustomed to the outhouse this was luxury indeed! In keeping with such an aura of royal splendor, the Tremont offered the guest a lobby which was separate from the baggage room.

From this innovative beginning, Isaiah Rogers went on to design a series of distinguished American hotels. These included several names which a few old-timers may still remember: the Gait House in Louisville, the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans, the Bangor House in Maine, and many others. These old "grand palaces" with their ornate lobbies, designed by Rogers, became gathering places for the public. Here the townspeople could see the celebrities of their time and, too, the celebrities could bask in the warmth of the average citizen's attention. It is easy to understand how the lobby quickly evolved as a social entity of its own.

Rogers' creativeness gave impetus to many new designs throughout the world and American hotels became regarded as innovative models to be copied both here and abroad. A leading example of such innovation came from the fashionable Holt's Hotel of New York, which offered the luxury of a steam-powered lift to carry luggage to the upper floors. This development led to the passenger elevator, said to have first be used around 1850 in New York's famous Fifth Avenue Hotel. In recent years, and even 'today, visitors to New York can see antique elevators rising upon hydraulically operated telescoping tubes. New York's splendid Astor House, an Isaiah Rogers original, erected at a purported cost of $400,000 (a sum with several times the purchasing power of today's money), actually had its own gas plant to provide light and heating. This fine old hotel also featured "bathing rooms" with hot water supplied by its own steam plant. The opening of the American West led to yet another type of establishment.