Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry

by Stanley Turkel

Overview

During the thirty years prior to the Civil War, Americans built hotels larger and more ostentatious than any in the rest of the world. These hotels were inextricably intertwined with American culture and customs but were accessible to average citizens. As Jefferson Williamson wrote in "The American Hotel" ( Knopf 1930), hotels were perhaps "the most distinctively American of all our institutions  for they were nourished and brought to flower solely in American soil and borrowed practically nothing from abroad".  Development of hotels was stimulated by the confluence of travel, tourism and transportation. In 1869, the transcontinental railroad engendered hotels by Henry  Flagler, Fred Harvey, George Pullman and Henry Plant. The Lincoln Highway  and the Interstate Highway System triggered hotel development by Carl Fisher, Ellsworth Statler, Kemmons Wilson and Howard Johnson. The airplane stimulated Juan Trippe, John Bowman, Conrad Hilton, Ernest Henderson, A.M. Sonnabend and John Hammons.. My research into the lives of these great hoteliers reveals that none of them grew up in the hospitality business but became successful through their intense on-the- job experiences. My investigation has uncovered remarkable and startling true stories about these pioneers, some of whom are well-known and others who are lost in the dustbin of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449007522
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	09/16/2009
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stanley Turkel is a recognized authority and consultant in the hotel industry. He specializes in asset management,  hotel franchising and litigation support services. Prior to forming his consulting firm, Turkel was the Product Line Manager for Hotel and Motel Operations at the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. overseeing the Sheraton Corporation of America. Earlier, he was the General Manager of the Summit Hotel and the Drake Hotel and Resident Manager of the Americana of New York. Turkel serves on the Board of Advisors and lectures at the NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management. Turkel is one of the most widely-published authors in the hospitality field. He brings many talents and accomplishments including his broad-based experience, his informed knowledge, his frequent appearances as guest speaker and his sterling reputation for integrity and honesty.

Read an Excerpt

Great American Hoteliers

Pioneers of the Hotel Industry

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By Stanley Turkel

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Stanley Turkel
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-0753-9

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Chapter One

John McEntee Bowman (1875-1931):

International Sportsman and Extraordinary Developer of Biltmore Hotels

John McEntee Bowman, president of the Bowman-Biltmore Hotel Corporation had no easy boyhood. Born in 1875 in Toronto to Irish-Scottish immigrants, Bowman came to New York in 1892- he was then seventeen- with the traditional lack of funds. He carried a letter of introduction to the manager of the old Manhattan Hotel at Madison Avenue and Forty-second Street. After waiting hours for an interview, he left without seeing the manager. He subsequently mailed the letter, asking for an appointment but received no reply and no returned letter. He got his first experience in the hotel business when an employment agency sent him as a front desk clerk to a summer hotel in the Adirondacks and the following winter to a hotel in the south. He later landed a job as riding- master at the Durland Riding Academy in Manhattan, a skill he learned in Canada working for a stable of race-horses on the county fair circuit. When Durland's passed a rule that the riding masters had to wear uniforms, Bowman rebelled, resigned and set up his own small riding academy. He had few horses and little cash but theventure was profitable enough when he left it to take charge of wines and cigars in the old Holland House on Fifth Avenue then operated by Gustave Baumann. Baumann served as his teacher and mentor and ultimately appointed him as his assistant and secretary. When Baumann opened the New York Biltmore Hotel on New Year's Eve in 1913, he appointed Bowman as vice president and managing director. In the summer of 1914, when Baumann in a fit of depression leaped from an upper-story window of the Biltmore, Bowman succeeded to the presidency. The Biltmore was designed by Warren & Wetmore in the popular Beaux-Arts style. Whitney Warren (1864-1943) studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and with his partner Charles Delavan Wetmore (1866-1941) specialized in the design of hotels, office buildings and railroad stations. Architect Leonard Schultze (1877-1951) was a lead designer for Warren & Wetmore and later designed some of the most famous U.S. hotels (Pierre, Sherry-Netherland, Waldorf-Astoria, Lexington, Breakers) in his own firm, Schultze and Weaver. The Biltmore opened near Grand Central Station with twenty-seven stories, and one thousand guestrooms.

At the turn of the twentieth century, railroads provided the genesis for the development of hotels. No invention up until then transformed modern life like the railroad which fostered development of new hotels near city railroad terminals. The ultimate development was the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, the Beaux-Arts centerpiece of an extraordinary complex of hotels, office buildings and apartment buildings. Railroad engineer William Wilgus conceived a way "to make the land pay more." Prior to the construction of Grand Central, land was viewed as having value on and below the surface including rights to mineral resources. But Wilgus realized that the space over the tracks was valuable as well and invented the concept of "commercial air rights". To pay for the enormous costs of excavating this area, Wilgus proposed selling the rights to real estate developers who were eager to build skyscrapers over the tracks. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s Wilgus's concept of air rights was realized. The Commodore, Biltmore, Park Lane, Roosevelt and Waldorf-Astoria were all developed in keeping with Wilgus's brilliant innovation.

The Hotel Monthly ("The Biltmore, New York's Newest Hotel Creation," January 1914) praised the operating benefits of the Biltmore's regular, square-shaped plan, including symmetrical layout of corridors with very few turns, easing the circulation of guests. The U-shaped light well of the guestroom floors allowed better light and ventilation, creating a large number of desirable rooms. The interior design located the public spaces in a logical and well-established division with the lower-level public rooms and upper-floor ballroom.

When Prohibition during the 1920s removed the economic cushion of liquor profits, John Bowman and the Warren & Wetmore firm applied a more rigorous cost analysis for the new Commodore Hotel in New York (1918-1919). They intended that the Commodore, built over Grand Central Station, would have two thousand rooms at lesser rates than the Biltmore. John Bowman wrote in Hotel Management (April 1923):

This large number of people includes many who are not used to complete personal service such as the attendance of a valet, and who do not like to be waited upon too much. So the degree of our service which corresponded with the reduced cost as compared with the Biltmore, also corresponded with fair exactness to the desires and business demands of the guests. This great volume as compared with the overhead makes it possible to give say roughly eighty percent of the Biltmore service at sixty percent of the prices.

Hotel World magazine apparently agreed with Bowman. In an article titled "Hotel Commodore, New York City Now Heads Bowman Chain of Caravansaries" (February 1919), they wrote,

No other hotel in the world offers so much at any price. In the construction of the building the thought has been kept constantly in mind to produce a great hotel that could be operated at very low cost ... This the architects have been able to accomplish.

From the Bowman flair for the spectacular comes many a story. Example: a delegation of foreign hotel men visited the Commodore. Why not, thought Mr. Bowman, show them a typical U.S. spectacle? So he put up a tent in the Grand Ballroom of the Commodore, covered the floor with sawdust, secured sideshow acts and wild animals from his circus friend John Ringling. When the delegation arrived, it walked into a genuine circus, complete even to an elephant which the Commodore's freight elevator had safely transported.

Open the night stand drawer in almost any hotel room in the world and you will find a bible place there by the Gideon's International. The oldest Christian business professional men's association in the United States, the Gideons have been around for more than 100 years and have been placing Bibles in hotels rooms for almost that long.

The Association began in a hotel room on September 14, 1898, in Boscobel, Wisconsin. The manager of the Central Hotel there asked traveling salesmen John H. Nicholson of Janesville, Wis., and Samuel E. Hill of Beloit, Wis., to share a room in a crowded hotel, which was hosting a lumbermen's convention. In Room 19, above the saloon, the men discovered that they were both Christians. They prayed and read the Bible together before settling down for the night. They talked about starting a Christian traveling men's association but parted ways the next morning without any definite plans. A chance meeting the following May rekindled the idea, and on July 1, 1899, the two salesmen, joined by a third, William J. Knights, met in Janesville and founded the Gideons. The name comes from the Old Testament book of Judges. Today, the Boscobel Hotel, where the two founders met, is listed on the National Historical Register, and Room 19, where the idea of the Gideons was conceived, is marked with a special plaque.

The Gideons primary purpose has always been personal evangelization conducted by Christian business and professional men. As early as 1900, the organization considered putting Bibles at the front desk of the hotels its members stayed in, but it was not until 1908 that the association voted to place Bibles in all hotel rooms. Within 20 years of the first placement of a Gideon Bible in the hotel room, the association distributed one million Bibles. Because the Gideons so quickly became associated with hotel room bibles, the association has, at times, had to remind its members that the Bibles are but a means to an end, not an end in themselves. The sole purpose for the group is to win men, women, boys and girls to a saving knowledge of the Lord, Jesus Christ through personal witnessing and the distribution of Bibles.

John McEntee Bowman took the initiative to new heights. On the third floor of the Hotel Biltmore in New York, a mediation chapel was opened for guests and employees alike. It contained benches, a small altar and fresh flowers. Over the altar was the inscription, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28). Similar meditation chapels were installed in other hotels operated by the Bowman Biltmore Hotel Corporation. John Bowman said, "The presence of one spot in the hotel disassociated from the worldly things of life and dedicated to the God we profess to serve, is now recognized as a spiritual necessity."

By 1919 Bowman had bought and sold two major New York hotels, had acquired the Hotel Ansonia and had taken over the operation of the Murray Hill Hotel and the Belmont Hotel. By the time he opened the Commodore, his New York properties totaled nearly eight thousand guestrooms and, according to a headline in the New York Times (May 6, 1918) "encircled" Grand Central Terminal. Meanwhile, Bowman was expanding his Biltmore hotel empire across the United States and into Cuba.

"The Biltmore Hotel" was the name adopted by Bowman for his chain of hotels. The name evokes the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore estate whose buildings and gardens are privately-owned historical landmarks in Asheville, North Carolina.

Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel- in the early 1920s Southern California had a great surge in population, business creation and real estate development. Bowman commissioned Schultze and Weaver to design the Los Angeles Biltmore. The 11-story 1,112 room hotel opened in 1923 and became known as the "host of the coast". Composed of three huge towers, the Biltmore quickly became a Los Angeles icon with its grand ballroom seating 650. The main lobby is three stories high with deep barrel vaulting, a gilded, coffered ceiling and features a dramatic staircase derived from an early sixteenth- century staircase in the Spanish Burgos Cathedral. The hotel has served as the backdrop setting for more than 50 major motion pictures including Ghostbusters, The Nutty Professor, Independence Day, True Lies, Dave and Beverly Hills Cop.

Sevilla- Biltmore Hotel, Havana, Cuba- During the 1920s, Havana was a favorite winter vacation destination for well-to-do Americans. In 1919, John Bowman and Charles Francis Flynn bought the four-story Sevilla Hotel which was built in 1908 by the architects Arellano y Mendoza. On January 28, 1923, the New York Times reported that Bowman would build a ten-story addition with Schultze and Weaver designs. Set at a right angle to the original Sevilla, the new building added two hundred guestrooms and bathrooms, the 300-seat Roof Garden restaurant with spectacular views of the Presidential Palace, the Capitol Building and Morro Castle. The expanded Sevilla Biltmore Hotel opened on January 30, 1924. Bowman and Flynn timed their expansion just right. The Sevilla-Biltmore opened five years after Prohibition was imposed in the United States.

The hotel was featured in Graham Greene's novel, Our Man In Havana.

Atlanta Biltmore Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia- John McEntee Bowman and Holland Ball Judkins partnered with Coca-Cola heir William Candler to develop the $6 million Atlanta Biltmore in 1924 with eleven floors, 600 guestrooms, extensive convention facilities and an adjacent ten-story apartment building. The Atlanta Biltmore was designed by Bowman's favorite architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver.

The Atlanta Biltmore was built close to the downtown area but separated from the business district. The hotel opened with great fanfare with a chartered train from New York City to bring wealthy and famous guests to Atlanta for the grand opening. The opening festivities were broadcast nationally over the radio. According to one reporter, hotels like the Atlanta Biltmore provided "the background for a ceaseless pageant of human life, and even of human romance, and architecturally it is at its best when it dramatizes the people beneath its roof, when it makes the life and spirit within its walls transcend the routine and ordinary everyday trend of existence."

The Atlanta Biltmore, once known as the South's supreme hotel, staged galas, tea dances, debutante balls, and recitals by visiting Metropolitan Opera stars. It served celebrities such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mary Pickford, Bette Davis, and Charles Lindbergh. For more than 30 years, WSB, the South's first radio station, broadcasted from its studios within the hotel and the radio tower on the hotel roof which became a landmark on the city skyline. Facing increased competition from Atlanta's modern downtown hotels, it was sold to a series of owners beginning in the 1960s and closed its doors in 1982. In Spring 1999 after extensive renovations, the former Biltmore Hotel reopened for the first time in almost 20 years and won an Honorable Mention in the Best Mixed-Use Deal of the Year category in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

The Westchester Biltmore Country Club, Rye, N.Y.- In May 1922, Bowman opened the luxurious Westchester-Biltmore Country Club in Rye, New York. The $5 million hotel and country club was located on 680 acres purchased from three different sellers. In the summer of 1919, an eight-story building was built from designs by the New York architects Warren & Wetmore. In it Bowman combined what were to become signature elements of all his great hotels; a total environment that would include amenities well beyond that of an ordinary country club. Members and guests were able to participate in golf, tennis, squash, trap shooting, and swimming at a private bathing beach on Long Island Sound. Bowman, who was a fan of amateur horse racing, built a polo field designed for horse shows and other equestrian entertainment. The two 18-hole golf courses were designed by Walter J. Travis, the great British and American golf champion-turned-golf course architect. Bowman had a special interest in fox hunting. He belonged to the Westchester Country Beagles Club, the Fairfield County Fox Hounds Club and the United Hunts Racing Association. On May 15, 1922, John McEntee Bowman formally opened the Westchester County Club with almost 1,500 members.

The Arizona Biltmore Hotel, Phoenix, Arizona- Warren McArthur, his brother Charles and John McEntee Bowman opened the Arizona Biltmore on February 23, 1929. The Biltmore's architect of record is Albert Chase McArthur but it is often referred to as a Frank Lloyd Wright design. This attribution is refuted by Wright himself who wrote in the Architectural Record:

All I have done in connection with the building of the Arizona Biltmore near Phoenix, I have done for Albert McArthur himself at his sole request, and for none other. Albert McArthur is the architect of that building- all attempts to take the credit for that performance from him are gratuitous and beside the point. But for him, Phoenix would have had nothing like the Biltmore, and it is my hope that he may be enabled to give Phoenix many more beautiful buildings as I believe him entirely capable of doing.

McArthur did utilize one of Wright's signature design elements: the textile block system. In 1930, the McArthurs lost control of the resort to one of their primary investors, William Wrigley, Jr. Ten years later, the Wrigley family sold the hotel to the Talley family. In 1973, after a large fire destroyed most of the property, it was promptly rebuilt better than ever. After a series of ownership changes, CNL Hotels and Resorts acquired it in 2004 and gave the management contract to KSL Recreation, Inc. (Continues...)

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Excerpted from Great American Hoteliers by Stanley Turkel Copyright © 2009 by Stanley Turkel . Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Dedication....................vii
Foreword....................ix
Preface....................xi
Introduction....................xv
John McEntee Bowman (1875-1931): International Sportsman and Extraordinary Developer of Biltmore Hotels....................1
Carl Graham Fisher (1874-1939): Mr. Miami Beach, Mr. Montauk and Much More....................25
Henry Morrison Flagler (1830-1913): The Robber Baron Who Invented Florida....................43
John Q. Hammons (1919- ): Master Hotel Developer, Builder, Owner and Manager....................67
Frederick Henry Harvey (1835-1901): Civilizer of the Wild West....................89
Ernest Henderson (1897-1967): Shrewd New England Investor and Founder of the Sheraton Corporation of America....................107
Conrad Nicholson Hilton (1887-1979): Flamboyant King of The Innkeepers....................127
Howard Dearing Johnson (1896-1972): Host of the Highway and the Orange Roof....................151
J. Willard Marriott (1900-1985): From Hot Shoppes to the Worldwide Marriott Hotel Company....................169
Kanjibhai Manchhubhai Patel: A Wonderful American Immigrant Success Story....................189
Henry Bradley Plant (1819-1899): Developer of Florida's Gulf Coast....................219
George Mortimer Pullman (1831-1897): Inventor of Hotel Rooms on Wheels....................235
A. M. Sonnabend (1896-1964): Legendary Financier, Squash Champion and Hotel Pioneer....................253
Ellsworth Milton Statler (1863-1928): Hotel Man of the Half Century....................271
Juan Terry Trippe (1899-1981): Founderof Pan American World Airways and the InterContinental Hotels Company....................289
Kemmons Wilson (1913-2003): Founder of Holiday Inns and The World's Innkeeper....................317
Bibliography....................337
Index....................345