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Show 4 ALL ABOUT HOTELS By Frederic J. Haskin. i - f ' Xr;V YORK. May 9. From 50.000 to ' 73, 0-'0 people register in NVv York hotels every day. Xew York's floating population popula-tion is so lan:e that it has of necessity more hotels than aro other city in the world, and it has the largest hotels In the world. In London or 1'arLs a hotel with 30 becl rooms Is accounted lartce. Xew York's largest has 2-00 rooms, and a dozen or so others have 1000 rooms or 1 more. Exactly how many hotels Xew York possesses nobody knows. The baffling ; question is at what point a lodging house becomes a bote!, for hundreds of small rooming houses call themselves hotels on the strength of a desk and boxes in w'jirh lodLrer-i keys and mail are kept. '1 r-sc small establishments are hard to cunt, because they are so ephemeral. Of the real hotels there are at least 500. And of these 140 first-class hotels are re;;is-: re;;is-: tered with the Xew York Hotel association. associa-tion. I Each of these big hotels is a city in itself. The- largest have their own ice cream factories, laundries, half a dozen , dining rooms, skating rinks, complicated 'machinery for doing almost every kitchen 'job, libraries, hospitals and shops. Xew York's newest hotel, which for tho time being bears the title "Eargest in the World," manufactures enough ice in its : private factory to supply a town of 50,000 . inhabitants. Among other significant facts, the manager man-ager of this hotel mentions that $-lo.m0 a year is the expected cost of replacing rugs in public rooms that is, parlors, i lobbies and dining rooms. Tho amount I of wear and tear on hotel furnishings is so enormous that repair shops are included in-cluded in every up-to-date hotel. Jn these workshops, concealed in some out-of-the-way part of the hotel, workmen are always employed to recover chairs, relacquer beds or mend broken furniture. furni-ture. Furniture movers are also part of the regular staff of a big hotel. One of the most famous Xew York hotels employs twenty men to move furniture in the flay and two or three at night. This particular partic-ular moving staff is probably the largest larg-est employed by any hotel in the city. It is necessary because this hotel entertains enter-tains many conventions and delegations, and makes a specialty of rapid changes. A bride and groom may occupy a parlor par-lor suite one day. As soon as they depart, de-part, the rooms may be turned over to a printers' convention, and machinery of the trade set up where brocaded furniture furni-ture was an hour ago. At a recent dinner of the Xew York Aero club six airplanes were hauled up the hotel staircase to the banquet room to serve as part of the decorations. The hotel mover thinks nothing of getting automobiles up to the ballroom for an exhibit without scratching scratch-ing the furniture. The hotel just mentioned owns a portable port-able stage as large as that in any small theater, as well as scenery, curtains and electrical apparatus, and this stage can be set up and made ready for a. performance per-formance in a ballroom on a couple of hours' notice. "The most remarkable changes we ever made," said a manager of the hotel, "were on the day of the Palestine Com-mandery Com-mandery ball. The ball ended at 5 a. m. A delegation of Ohio corn-prize boys and girls came in at 7:30 and were having breakfast in the ballroom at 8. Then there was a concert in the same room at 1, and a. dinner that evening, followed by a dance. All this involved putting in and taking out tables and chairs, changing chang-ing decorations and cleaning up." This same house has the most expensive expen-sive suite in a Xew York hotel. Rooms of this suite can be engaged separately, but when rented as a whole, the ten-room ten-room "state anartmenu" costs SI -3 a day, or nearly ?4000 a month,. ' This apartment apart-ment can be shut off from the rest of the hotel, as it has its own marble staircase to the first floor, and its own gilded elevator. The entire puite is not often- -in demand, except by Borne diplomatic diplo-matic mission or transient millionaire. It -is a matter of hotel history that the . Japanese mission occupied this, suite at the close of the Russo-Japanese war. This- establishment, which is one of the oldest of the really big hotels, is famous fa-mous for its "atmosphere." Everything about it is rich in tradition, and not the least of its storied possessions Is its banquet manager, who is known all over the United States. When the hotel opened, some twenty-five yeaTs ago,, he entered its service as a bus boy, to carry dishes out of the dining room. From that rank he hasisfct! to be manager of important dinners at a salary of $;i0,000 a year. He has his farm on the banks of the Hudson, and motors into New York every day. He is probably the world's greatest authority on public eating. eat-ing. This man, who has worked his way to the top of his business, is of Swiss na-, na-, tionality. The great majority of hotel iand cafe waiters are foreign, largely because be-cause the American boy will not enter service as a waiter, even though he may earn more than in a factory or business office. The proportion of foreigners is not so great among the women employees. What happens to girls who run away to seek their fortunes can be told in part by the servant girls of any hotel. Often the girl who runs away has too little business experience to do office work, is not pretty pret-ty enough for the stage, and is afraid of losing caste if she tries domestic service. The way out for her is hotel service, so that a surprising percentage of hotel chambermaids are adventurous young women from the country. Few people realize that the number of r hotel's employees is usually greater than the number of its guests. A hotel that accommodates two thousand guests will have at least two thousand persons on its staff, for whom it must provide a special dining room, kitchen and cooks, somo bedrooms for employees who sleep at the hotel, and rest rooms and hospital equipment. There are several hundred thousand hotel employees in New York enough to populate a fair-sized city. All hotel employees are important, but if any distinction is made, the house detectives de-tectives may be placed next to the head cook. "Very little is known of these men who protect the guests and the house. They wear plain, inconspicuous clothes, and they do not reveal their business by an air .of mystery or curiosity. When a person of national or international importance im-portance visits the hotel they are responsible re-sponsible for' his safety. If the president presi-dent of the Uniled States is to stop at the hotel, for instance, the floor on which he is to be located is cleared of guests except well-known persons or old residents resi-dents of the hotel. Some presidents make life a burden for the house detectives and their own secret service men by eating in the public dining rooms and appearing in the hotel corridors. Others stay closely in their apartments. The floating population of Xew York, in the opinion of the hotel man, is unreasonable. un-reasonable. He ca n never tell whether tomorrow will bring in a large delegation of tourists from some town in the fa r southwest, who enter New York eon fi-denlly fi-denlly and march up to his hotel, stating calmly that they have heard that it has good music and demanding ronms for the delegation all on the same flor.r. Thousands Thou-sands of people "drop into New York" every day on business or pleasure, and expect rooms at a hotel in a certain location lo-cation at a certain prh-e without having engaged the rooms beforehand. Others who write in to ask about rooms make strange demands. For example: Have you a place where my little boy can play? Or, you take care of young girls? .My daughter is coining to New I York alone. These particular situations have so often been brought up that plav rooms and playgrounds a re tea t ui-s. of newer hotels, and as for the girl, or woman wo-man either, in the big city, there are hotels ho-tels where women guests only are accommodated, ac-commodated, and one of the largest hotels ho-tels has one floor set aside for women, Willi a hostess in attendance.. This same hotel has a not her floor reserved re-served f"r men only, and still another fur Spa nish -speak ing guest :;. This last -named flnOT, whieh is attended by Spanish-speaking employees, is for the benefit ben-efit of Si.uth American business men. I'.y advertising ihnmgh Sm;th America thL. h"ie management makes a financial success suc-cess uf thio novelty. |