Grands Hotels
The term ‘grand hotel’ is strongly associated with an urban environment at the turn of the century, and immediately evokes notions of exclusiveness, elegance, and almost ceremonial rituals. As largest city in the world and imperial capital, London had its fair share of luxury hotels, the overwhelming majority of which were located in the fashionable West End, which offered their guests endless opportunities to amuse themselves around every corner.
The Palm Court and Restaurant at the Ritz 1906
The hotel industry underwent profound changes in the nineteenth century, when inn-keeping businesses transformed into professionally managed hotels as we know them today. While the first advertisement for a hotel in an English newspaper dates back to 1764, when Madame Martin promoted her ‘Gentlemens Hotel’ in St James’s Square, it was not until about a century later that hotels proliferated and raised their standards. (1) Population growth, industrialisation, urbanisation, and the transport revolution were all factors responsible for this development – as consumers had more money and leisure time, the demand for travel increased, and with it the demand for adequate accommodation. Expectations were high, and thus a professional hotel industry developed, aiming to provide a greater range of facilities and services.
The Langham
The first so-called grand hotel was the Grand Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, opened in 1855 at that time the largest hotel in Europe. It was constructed at the request of Baron Haussmann, who was responsible for the modernisation and redesigning of the city, giving Paris the appearance that we know and admire today. A distinctly modern city needed a distinctly modern hotel; thus, the Grand Hôtel was fitted with every sort of amenity a guest could desire. Soon, luxury hotels were established in all over Europe and North America. Among London’s best-known grand hotels apart from the Carlton are the Langham (1865), the Savoy (1889), the Cecil (1896), and, of course, the Ritz (1906). As the century progressed, these hotels did not only increase in size – the Langham opened with 300 bedrooms, three decades later, the Cecil offered 800 bedrooms, – they were also quick to integrate new technologies. Particularly in the last years of the nineteenth century, the grands hotels of the capital came to include more and more luxuries, as remarked in guide books of that time. They were equipped with comforts such es electric light, lifts, central heating, telephones in the bedrooms, and, in several cases, even private orchestras.
The Savoy Hotel when it opened in 1889
These improvements were not only appreciated, but almost taken for granted by many who had not experienced earlier hotels, as journalist George Augustus Sala pointed out:
So luxurious are your surroundings that you frequently fail to realise the fact that you are staying at an hotel. You fancy that you are in some gorgeously appointed West-End club, at which ladies as well as gentlemen are present … To you young or middle-aged … there will be possibly very little matter for astonishment in the Grand Hotel to which you so blithely resort. You would consider it quite an outrage if you were unable to find hotels of the character which I have briefly delineated. (2)
The Cecil's grand staircase
When Sala wrote this, in 1894, the most luxurious grands hotels of London had not even been built yet, but it becomes evident that there was a demand for them. Although they were not instantly accepted by the social elites, grands hotels eventually became a popular resort of fashionable society and managed to establish themselves as social centres for the upper classes. This was achieved by creating a glamourous atmosphere with decadent entertainments on offer. The Palm Courts of hotels such as the Carlton were renowned for their splendour; Ritz even engaged Johann Strauss – the ‘Waltz King’ and his Viennese orchestra to play at the restaurant for dinner entertainment. Elaborate spectacles such as this, or a ‘Venetian dinner’ in the flooded front court of the Savoy, were created in order to attract guests as well as keep them amused. Grands hotels offered spaces for informal intercourse, and could be used for the loosening of gender relations or moral codes; the first instance of a woman smoking in public, for example, was reported to have occurred at the Savoy’s restaurant, where the Duchesse de Clermont-Ronnerre smoked several cigarettes at dinner in 1896. (3)
Above: The Savoy's Restaurant
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Right: The Venetian Dinner
At a grand hotel, a guest should equally feel ‘at home’ as well as experience something special beyond the routine of their daily lives. It was a temporary private space as well as a semi-public space of sociability; it offered both shelter against the impact of, as well as a starting point to discover, city-life. Luxury hotels were thus complex, often contradictory, places, but they were deeply embedded in modern city life. Indeed, a grand hotel would become a microcosmos of the city; it became a representation of the city, even the nation, itself. (4) In the case of London, these images were closely tied to the city’s status as imperial capital of a world-leading nation. London’s luxury hotels evolved into institutions, centres, and embodiments of London, and particularly its West End, itself – exciting, lavish, and sumptuous.
Above: New Year's Eve at the Savoy
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Left: The Carlton's Palm Court
(1) David Bowie, “Innovation and Nineteenth-Century Hotel Industry Evolution,” Tourism Management 64 (2018): 314.
(2) G. A. Sala, London Up to Date (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1894): 142-4.
(3) See Habbo Knoch, “Life on Stage: Grand Hotels as Urban Interzones around 1900,” in Creative Milieus: Historical Perspectives on Culture, Economy, and the City, eds. Martina Heßler, Clemens Zimmermann (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2008): 151 and Bowie, Innovation and Nineteenth-Century Hotel Industry, 321.
(4) Knoch, Life on Stage, 142, 154.
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