The year 1914 was a great era of hotel build ing enterprises. The following year showed a remarkable decrease in the number of new hotels, but was enlivened by the noticeable sumptuousness of the larger erections; these in cluded the mammoth Hotel Traymore, at At lantic City, N. J.; the Hotel Morrison, Chicago, with 1,600 bedrooms; the fine Hotel Pantlind at Grand Rapids, Mich. ,• the attractively de signed Hotel Muhlbach, Kansas City, Mo.-, the Adelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, built of brick and terra-cotta; and the great William Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh, Pa,, 20 stories high with 900 rooms.
When compared with the palatial hotels of to-day even the fine houses like the Tremont and the Astor Rouse were primitive in their construction and management The modern hotel is equipped with running water and set basins in every room; many rooms also have water-closets and baths with exposed plumb. Mg; everywhere there are open grates and steam heat, improved ventilation, elevators for both passengers and baggage, electric bells, tele• phones and every possible device to prevent fire, or to assure the safe escape of guests in case of a conflagration. Utensils and machinery have also multiplied greatly during the past few years, for the best hotels now run a thoroughly up-to-date laundry, an electric-lighting plant, apparatus for the distilling of water, and the most elaborate cold-storage conveniences, often including an individual ice-making plant, while among the other necessary conveniences of every well-equipped hotel one may mention the reading, writing and music rooms; the coat, package and baggage rooms; the barber shop, with its manicuring, boot-blacking and other accessories; the billiard-room; telephone, tele graph and ticket offices; the book and news stand; the stenographers and typewriters, and the carriage and messenger services, not to mention a score of other details that are just as imperative a necessity. It is no uncommon
thing to-day to find sinele hotel structures val ued at $3,000,000 or $5,000,000 equipped with furnishings costing many hundred thousand dollars.
A conservative estimate of the number of hotels in the United States, in a recent year, exclusive of those in process of erection, places the number at over 50,000. Of these about 4,000 are summer or winter resort hotels, 3,000 are family hotels, while the balance are commercial houses. These hotels now give em ployment to no less than 4,000,000 persons, and the amount of capital invested in the business is undoubtedly in excess of $6,500,000,000. Con sult 'Hotel Red Book: the United States Offi cial Hotel Directory' (New York 1886-1918).