Though the examples of apartment-houses given are all from New York City, where that class of building is more abundant than elsewhere, Boston has also its apartment-houses, such as the Warren, the Hotel Cluny, the Boylston, and the Hotel Elliott, Boston Highlands. Several structures of this kind exist also in Chicago, among iX-hick the Bean riyage may be expressly mentioned.
The and the apartment-house differ in degree only, and all grades may intervene; yet there could hardly be a more undesirable res idence than the New York tenement-house as built for the occupancy of the workingman, while those structures of handsome external appearance which are occupied by many tenants of the lower middle class are devoid of the charms of home. When flats intended for one family are converted, into boarding-houses or let to sub-tenants, neither health nor comfort can be expected. The Astral Tenement-house, New York City, is intended for a class similar to that reached by the Peabody buildings in London. The staircases ascend in open loggias, and the circular heads of the en trances and upper windows diversify the otherwise plain exterior.
Hotc/s.—The United States is the land of big hotels. The size of the country, the universality of railroads, the great development of the dis tributing industries—which here bear to manufacturing and production a proportion far larger than in any other country—combine to produce an immense floating population, and hence to favor the construction of huge caravansaries. Such aggregations of sleeping-rooms, with their accom panying public offices, do not lend themselves readily to much archi tectural effect, especially since the attempt is always made to economize space to an extent which cannot he equalled iu a private house. Gen erally, American city hotels consist externally of series after series of rect angular windows little broken by projections and seldom diversified by loggias, balconies, or other features which would tend to break the monot onous regularity. In the country or at the seaside the hotels are usually surrounded by a continuous, or almost continuous, veranda, which is not seldom repeated on the floor above.
The recent taste for eccentricity of form and variety of outline has clone much to relieve hotel-architecture of its monotony, and has produced, especially in country and seaside resorts, some picturesque structures; vet it still remains a fact that, compared with private or even with apartment houses, large hotels usually and in proportion to their size lack grace and artistic merit. Perhaps the dome of the St. Charles Hotel, at New
Orleans, is equal to any bit of hotel-architecture in the country.
The hotels of New York City rival the apartment-houses in upward extension, but are architecturally greatly inferior to them. The celebrated Astor House has at least the merit of not attempting too much. It is a granite pile of Egyptian severity, relieved only by Tuscan pilasters at the angles, the plainest of entablatures to crown the building, and a massive Doric entrance-portico. Windows are few, small, unadorned, and rectan gular, but the attic—or, rather, frieze—has numerous windows. Most of the other hotels have more pretence to ornamentation, but are much more ordinary. The Fifth Avenue Hotel is but several series of superposed Italian windows with the usual mouldings and consoles, and the same remark will apply to many more. The Hotel Dam shows in its bay-win dows of brick the influence of the Oueen Anne manner; but one of the most conspicuous pieces of modern hotel-architecture to be found in the city is the Plaza Family Hotel. This is a peculiar structure. The facade is most conspicuously panelled with oblong panels filled with elaborate carving; these sculptures predominate in the general effect of that part of the structure which is below the roof.
Hotels are not very conspicuous in Philadelphia. The Continental and the Lafayette are the largest, and the latter is still the tallest residen tial structure in the city. The Continental loses in effect by the absence of a conspicuous entrance. The West End and the Bellevue are both quiet, unpretentious structures of red brick.
The Brunswick, Boston, is architecturally one of the finest hotels in the country. Three-sided bays, some of them carried on bold corbelling, alternate with straight surfaces of wall in pleasing variety, and the en trance is well accentuated by three round arches led up to by a magnif icent staircase. The Vendome, of white marble, is another fine struc ture, of eight storeys, of some architectural pretensions.