Great American Hotel Architects: Volume 1

By Stanley Turkel CMHS

The twelve architects featured in this book designed ninety-four hotels from 1878 to 1948. Many of them worked as apprentices in architect’s offices. Some were lucky enough to study in an architectural college, and some were wealthy enough to attend the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris. This school has a history of more than 350 years in training many of the great artists of Europe. Beaux-Arts’s style was modeled on classical antiquities. The origins of the school were drawn from 1648—when the Académe des
Beaux-Arts was founded to educate the most talented students in drawing, painting, sculpting, engraving, and architecture. Women were admitted beginning in 1897.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728306902

Stanley Turkel CMHS

STANLEY TURKEL is a recognized authority and consultant in the hotel industry. He operates his hotel consulting practice serving as an expert witness in hotel-related cases and providing asset management. Prior to forming his own hotel consulting firm, Turkel was the Product Line Manager of Hotel/Motel operations at the International Telephone & Telegraph Company overseeing the Sheraton Corporation of America. Before joining IT&T, he was the General Manager of the Summit Hotel (762 Rooms), General Manager of the Drake Hotel (680 Rooms) and Resident Manager of the American Hotel (1842 Rooms), all in New York City. Turkel is certified as a Master Hotel Supplier Emeritus by the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Stanley Turkel is one of the most widely-published authors in the hospitality industry in the United States. In 2014 and 2015, he was designated as the Historian of the Year by the Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. [e-mail] www.stanleyturkel.com

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OTHER BOOKS BY STANLEY TURKEL

• Heroes of the American Reconstruction (2005)

• Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)

• Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)

• Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)

• Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt and Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)

• Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)

• Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)

• Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)

GREAT AMERICAN HOTEL ARCHITECTS

VOLUME 1

STANLEY TURKEL, CMHS

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© 2019 Stanley Turkel, CMHS. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse   04/11/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-0691-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-0689-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-0690-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903978

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

Foreword

1.     Warren & Wetmore

2.     Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (1847-1918)

3.     Schultze & Weaver

4.     Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter (1869-1958)

5.     Bruce Price (1845-1903)

6.     Mulliken & Moeller

7.     McKim, Mead & White

8.     Carrére & Hastings

9.     Julia Morgan (1872-1957)

10.   Emery Roth (1871-1948)

11.   Trowbridge & Livingston

12.   George B. Post (1837-1913)

Illustration Credits

The first principle of architectural beauty is that the essential lines of construction be determined by a perfect appropriateness to its use.

-Gustave Eiffel

DEDICATION

To my beloved mother, Mollie Turkel, whose great sense of humor was enhanced by remembering all the punch lines.

INTRODUCTION

The twelve architects featured in this book designed 94 hotels from 1878 to 1948. Many of them worked as apprentices in architect’s offices. Some were lucky enough to study in an architectural college and some were wealthy enough to attend the Ecole des Beaux Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris. This school has a history of more than 350 years training many of the great artists of Europe. Beaux Arts style was modeled on classical antiquities. The origins of the school are drawn from 1648 when the Academie des Beaux Arts was founded to educate the most talented students in drawing, painting, sculpture, engraving and architecture. Women were admitted beginning in 1897.

The curriculum was divided into the Academy of Painting and Sculpture and the Academy of Architecture. Both programs focused on classical arts and architecture from Ancient Greek and Roman culture. All students were required to prove their skills with basic drawing tasks before advancing to figure drawing and painting. This culminated in a competition for the Grand Prix de Rome, awarding a full scholarship to study in Rome. The three trials to obtain the prize lasted for nearly three months. Many of the most famous artists in Europe were trained here, to name but a few, they include Géricault, Degas, Delacroix, Fragonard, Ingres, Moreau, Renoir, Seurat, Cassandre, and Sisley. Rodin however, applied on three occasions but was refused entry.

The Paris school is the namesake and founding location of the Beaux Arts architectural movement in the early twentieth century. Known for demanding classwork and setting the highest standards for education, the Ècole attracted students from around the world – including the United States, where students returned to design buildings that would influence the history of architecture in America, including the Boston Public Library, 1888-1895 (McKim, Mead & White) and the New York Public Library, 1897-1911 (Carrère and Hastings.)

Here, in summary, are the 94 hotels designed by the twelve architects described in this study of Great American Hotel Architects:

Warren & Wetmore

• Belmont Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1906)

• Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1911)

• Vanderbilt Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1912)

• Hotel Chatham, New York, N.Y. (1917)

• Hotel Ambassador, New York, N.Y. (1921)

• Hotel Commodore, New York, N.Y. (1919)

• Hotel McAlpin, New York, N.Y. (1912): Addition

• Plaza Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1907): Renovation

• Westchester-Biltmore Country Club and Hotel, Rye, N.Y. (1922)

• Providence-Biltmore Hotel, Providence, R.I. (1922)

• Hotel Sevilla, Havana, Cuba (1924): Addition

• Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, Co. (1918)

• Condado-Vanderbilt Hotel, San Juan, Puerto Rico (1919)

• Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Atlantic City, N.J. (1919)

• Hotel Ambassador, Atlantic City, N.J. (1921)

• Shelburne Hotel, Atlantic City, N.J. (1922)

• St. Charles Hotel, Atlantic City, N.J. (1906)

• The Homestead Hotel, Hot Springs, Va. (1892)

• Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C. (1925)

• Hotel Bermudiana, Hamilton, Bermuda (1924)

• Constant Spring Hotel, Kingston, Jamaica (1931)

• Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu, Hawaii (1927)

• Pantlind Hotel, Grand Rapids, Michigan (1902)

• Omni Berkshire Place Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1926)

Schultze & Weaver

• Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles (1922)

• Park Lane Hotel, New York (1922)

• Nautilus Hotel Miami Beach (1924)

• Atlanta Biltmore Hotel, Atlanta (1924)

• Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore Havana (1924)

• Miami Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables (1925)

• Breakers Hotel, Palm Beach (1925)

• Roney Plaza Hotel, Miami Beach (1926)

• Montauk Manor, Montauk Point (1927)

• General Oglethorpe Hotel, Savannah (1927)

• Sherry-Netherland Hotel, New York (1927)

• Hotel Pierre, New York (1929)

• Lexington Hotel, New York (1929)

• Waldorf-Astoria, New York (1931)

Julia Morgan

• 15 YWCA’s

Emery Roth

• Hotel Belleclaire, New York, N.Y. (1903)

• Hotel Oliver Cromwell, New York, N.Y. (1927)

• Ritz Tower Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1925)

• Hotel Beverly, New York, N.Y. (1927)

• Mayflower Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1925)

• Warwick Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1927)

• Hotel St. Moritz, New York, N.Y. (1930)

• Hotel Dixie, New York, N.Y. (1930)

• Drake Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1926)

• Hotel Dorset, New York, N.Y. (1927)

• Park Lane Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1971)

• Helmsley Palace Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1981)

McKim, Mead & White

• Harvard Club of New York (1894)

• The Metropolitan Club, New York, N.Y. (1894)

• The Century Association, New York, N.Y. (1891)

• The University Club of New York (1899)

• The Harmonie Club, New Y7ork, N.Y. (1905)

• Garden City Hotel, Garden City, N.Y. (1895)

• Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Havana, Cuba (1930)

• Halcyon Hotel, Miami, Florida (1903)

Henry J. Hardenbergh

• The Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C. (1902)

• Hotel Martinique, New York, N.Y. (1910)

• Hotel Albert, New York, N.Y. (1883)

• The Plaza Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1907)

• Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston, Ma. (1912)

• The Raleigh Hotel, Washington, D.C. (1911)

Carrere & Hastings

• Ponce de Leon Hotel, St. Augustine, Florida (1887)

• Hotel Alcazar, St. Augustine, Florida (1889)

• Jefferson Hotel, Richmond, Virginia (1895)

• Whitehall Mansion, Palm Beach, Florida (1902)

Mulliken & Moeller

• Aberdeen Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1904)

• Lucerne Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1904)

• Iroquois Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1900)

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter

• Hopi House, South Rim, Grand Canyon National Park (1905)

• Hermit’s Rest

• Indian Building

• Lookout Studio

• Desert View Watchtower

• Bright Angel Lodge (1935)

• Phantom Ranch (1922)

• Victor Hall (1936)

• Colter Hall (1937)

• El Navajo, Gallup, New Mexico

• La Posada, Winslow, Arizona

• Painted Desert Inn, Petrified Forest, Arizona

• Harvey House Restaurant, Los Angeles Union Station

Trowbridge & Livingston

• St. Regis Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1905)

• Knickerbocker Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1906)

George B. Post and Sons

• Hotel Syracuse, Syracuse, N.Y. (1924)

• The Olympic Hotel, Seattle, Wa. (1924)

• The Pontiac Hotel, Oswego County, N.Y. (1912)

• The Roosevelt Hotel, New York, N.Y. (1924)

• Statler Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio (1912)

• Statler Hotel, Detroit, Michigan (1914)

• Statler Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri (1917)

• Statler Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts (1927)

FOREWORD

Donna Quadri-Felitti, PhD

Marvin Ashner Director of the School of Hospitality Management

The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

Stanley Turkel is the foremost evangelist on the history of hotels in the United States. His commitment to chronicling the achievements of the men and women who have gone before and have succeeded in the American lodging industry is unparalleled.

In Stanley’s latest contribution to the library of our industry, he has married two central themes in his publications—namely, he has combined his passion for the people who have dominated the U.S. lodging industry and his celebration of the actual hotel buildings themselves. Most of the hotels referenced in this book were conceived and financed through the vision and determination of tycoons and entrepreneurs of the last century, whereas the architects of these properties were commissioned to translate those same dreams into functional places and spaces that housed travelers and guests from around the world and were profitable as well.

Within this Volume 1 of the Great American Hotel Architects, Mr. Turkel brings to the reader the stories of investors and developers who hired and collaborated with the most celebrated and well known architects of the age to build iconic hotels, some still standing today others a memory of the past. From the most eminent firms of the last century such as McKim, Mead & White to lesser known, pioneering women architects such as Julia Morgan and Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Stanley has provided us a foundational treatise and reference for the future. I predict from this volume to the next, students and scholars, hotel owners and operators, and those that love American history, will continue to be delighted, informed and inspired by these pages.

Great American Hotel Architects

Volume 1

Warren & Wetmore

• Whitney Warren (1864-1943)

• Charles D. Wetmore (1866-1941)

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the most successful architectural firm in the United States was Warren & Wetmore. They produced more than three hundred major projects encompassing the prevailing architectural styles of the exciting period of the first three decades of the twentieth century.

As architect and professor Robert A.M. Stern writes in the Foreword of The Architecture of Warren & Wetmore by Peter Pennoyer and Anne Walker (W.W. Norton & Company New York 2006):

Warren & Wetmore virtually invented the modern luxury resort hotel, perfected the grand, apartment house, and transformed buildings for transportation into quintessential urban landmarks.

Pennoyer and Walker were able to dramatize and describe the extraordinary architectural accomplishments of Whitney Warren and Charles D. Wetmore in one of the most successful architectural partnership in the development of American cities.

Whitney Warren wrote, Architecture is always an evolution. Of course, we use old styles; we can’t invent a new one, we can only evolve a new one. So we are taking the best elements in the old styles, and we are attempting to produce from them what is suggested and demanded by our present conditions in a new and American style.

image001.jpg

Figure 1 Whitney Warren

Architect Whitney Warren and attorney Charles D. Wetmore are best known for their spectacular Grand Central Terminal in New York City (1904-1912). Partners for more than thirty years, they were the beneficiaries of the rapid growth of American cities during the Gilded Age. The firm’s bold interpretation of French and classical styles into American design reflected their sensitivity to the cultural, social and business requirements of the country’s aspiring well-to-do population.

In addition to Grand Central Terminal, Warren and Wetmore created some of New York’s most memorable buildings including the singular New York Yacht Club on West 44th Street adjacent to the Harvard Club of New York. They also designed great hotels and grand mansions for the wealthiest families of New York including the Vanderbilts.

Educated in architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1887 and 1894, Whitney Warren adopted a lifelong devotion to European classicism with a sprinkling of American design independence. Warren invited Harvard-educated Charles Wetmore, lawyer, businessman and real estate developer, to form a joint partnership. These two businessmen were trained in widely varied disciplines which melded together successfully.

In addition to Grand Central Terminal (in partnership with architects Charles A. Reed and Allen H. Stem), the firm’s most significant commissions were the Ritz, Vanderbilt, Ambassador and Biltmore Hotels in Manhattan; opulent town houses and elite apartment houses on Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue; country clubs and tennis and squash courts in Tuxedo Park, Long Island, South Carolina and Massachusetts; and expansive estates in suburban New Jersey, the Hudson River Valley and on Long Island. In addition, Warren & Wetmore designed the Seamen’s Church Institute, Steinway Hall, the Heckscher Building, the New Aeolian Hall and the Chelsea Piers complex. In the 1910s and 1920s, Warren & Wetmore also designed railroad stations and terminals for the New York Central Railroad and for various Canadian railroad lines.

Warren & Wetmore’s unique architectural designs were devoted to classicism that became known as modern French when used in American practice. They embraced all three divisions of the Beaux-Arts style: architecture, painting and sculpture. Some of their greatest works were so imaginative that they escaped easy analysis. On his seventy-fourth birthday, Whitney Warren declared I don’t believe there was even any one else who got as much fun out of life as I did. Born into a wealthy family, he grew up with a sense of adventure and purpose. One of eight children, Whitney was raised in New York and spent summers at the family’s villa in Newport, Rhode Island. After being schooled by private tutors, Warren enrolled in Columbia University’s School of Architecture class of 1886. Warren found the new school (which started in 1881) uninspiring and, after marrying Charlette Tooker at age of twenty, left for Paris. Warren’s ten-year stay in Europe provided the direction and education that shaped his professional life. Although he failed to earn a diploma from Beaux-Arts school, he won a few design awards and returned to the United States in 1894. In 1909, he was elected to the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts at the Institut de France. While living in Paris, Warren had grown into a true cosmopolite and ardent Francophile, adopting the French manner and style of dress. Throughout his adult life, he wore an unchanging costume of blue shirt, white silk scarf, white double-breasted waistcoat, dark suit, opera cloak, broad-rimmed black hat and, later, a gold-tipped cane. Lawrence White, son of Warren’s friend Stanford White, commented: He was an absolutely fantastic person just to look at. He was very handsome… He carried himself and acted exactly as if he was a French aristocrat before the Revolution. He wore very peculiar clothes, but got away with it.

Soon after his return from Paris in 1894, Warren won the commission to design the Newport Country Club against some of the well-known architects including the well-known Boston firm of Peabody & Stearns. In an era when country clubs were becoming essential outlets for wealthy patrons, the Newport Country Club became a popular facility and was described in the New York Times in 1895 as supreme in magnificence among golf clubs not only in America but in the world.

From 1896 to 1898, Warren worked for McKim, Mead & White as a draftsman. When he won the commission for the New York Yacht Club in 1898, Warren joined with attorney Charles Delavan Wetmore for whom he had designed a house. Like Warren, Charles Wetmore was raised in a wealthy family prominent in business and civic life. He was the son of Rosalia Elona Hall (1838-1912) and Charles Canvass Wetmore (1829-1867) of Warren, Pennsylvania who was a civil engineer and well-to-do businessman. He was a pioneer in the development of Western Pennsylvania’s oil business and an investor in a lumber company on the Allegheny River. Young Wetmore entered Harvard Law School in 1892. Soon, thereafter, he began buying property between Harvard Yard and the St. Charles river to construct rental housing for wealthy students. In 1898, he designed and built the expensive Tudor-style Westmorly Hall which was well-furnished with a gymnasium, handball courts, showers, telephones, fireplaces and an indoor/outdoor swimming pool.

Upon his graduation from law school, Wetmore relocated to New York and became a trial lawyer at Carter & Ledyard. After a promising start in his law career, Wetmore was prematurely derailed by partial deafness. As a result, he was convinced to join forces with Warren who had just won the commission for the New York Yacht Club. The unlikely partnership of Warren & Wetmore remained together for 33 years until Warren’s retirement in 1931. The firm remained in existence into the 1950s under the direction of Patrick Carry (1876-1962), formerly New York Central’s superintendent of construction, and Julian Holland (1888-1961), a Brooklyn-born architect and longtime associate of the firm.

From the beginning of their partnership, Warren & Wetmore were successful in securing assignments from the elite circles which they inhabited. Although he contributed little to the design activities of the firm, Wetmore was vital to its success. Warren would later say, I owe everything (to Wetmore)… he has been the force which I did not have in myself to keep me at my task. I (was) a very trying personage, impossible, not altogether selfish but impossible. Warren almost wrecked the partnership when he took a five-year hiatus from the practice to live in Paris to work for the Allied Forces through the end of World War I in 1918. He dedicated his energy toward the Red Cross Commission, the American Clearing House and the Secours National. Warren’s efforts led eventually to what would become his most prized post-war commission: the reconstruction of the university library (1922-1928) in the devastated town of Louvain, Belgium.

In their heyday, the two men made a formidable pair. Reflecting on architect Warren’s life, architect Howard Greenley wrote,

There was a certain splendor about the man himself, in his appearance and carriage that one instinctively recognized. There was also about him that indefinable quality of radiance that one felt was so inherently a part of the rare distinction of his thought and his person. To the unprejudiced mind he can be considered as the personification of what is implied of the ‘grand manner’…. It was, so to speak, a fundamental quality in the man and the essence of his whole personality.

Edward Weeks wrote in My Green Age (Boston, Little Brown, 1973) about attorney Charles Wetmore:

Charles Wetmore was very sure of himself and very stylish. His complexion was florid (so….was his temper), his fine white hair was brushed back above his ears and with his high-ridged aristocratic nose, thin lips and light blue eyes he was clearly one who enjoyed authority… Never had I encountered such a combination of intelligence, will power, and contentiousness as when I tried to hold my end up against Mr. Wetmore. He was an implacable Republican and twitted me about his admiration for Woodrow Wilson; he had no use for contemporary writing, seldom read a book, was a stickler for facts and, depending on how sure he was, would bet me five or ten dollars that I was wrong.

Weeks went on to write about Wetmore:

On anything having to do with building and finance, he was sharp as a buzz saw… To him a challenge was the quickest way to test a man, and he once admitted that his closest friends were those he had angered at the outset. He had achieved renown in his field without a degree in architecture and he scorned Who’s Who and jury awards-Who are they to judge me? was his attitude.

The New York Yacht Club, New York, N.Y. (1899)-

In February 1899, Whitney Warren won his first major commission in competition with seven of the best-known architectural firms to