COKER’S NEW HOTEL.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1659, 14 June 1879, Page 4

COKER’S NEW HOTEL.

This new hotel, erected at the corner of George and Manchester streets, will he opened on the first of next month, Mr J. E. Coker, th® proprietor and landlord, having obtained the license at last quarterly sitting of the Licensing Bench. Without casting reflections upon the hotel accommodation to bo found in Christchurch, it may bo s':ntod that the hotel under notice is of a superior kind, and one which would bo a credit to any city in the world. Though not so large perhaps as many in the colony, it is a very handsome building, and its internal arrangements are excellent. The main entrance is from Manchester street, through large folding doors, which open on a Gjh exposing the inner doors leading to the . These doors are made of cedar, with glass windows, embossed by a local artist, Mr Richard Atkinson. The hall is spacious and lofty, the walls and ceiling being plastered like every other portion of the house through out. The entrance to the bar, and that leading to other portions of the hotel, are in George street, an arrangement which separates the bar trade from the family hotel, and secures additional privacy to lodgers, there being a passage from the second private entrance leading to a private parlour. The commercial and dining rooms are large, well ventilated rooms, plastered throughout, and handsomely furnished. As Mr Coker’s fob j cot was |to make the house a family hotel in the correct sense, every attention has been directed to that end. There are, for instance, six suites of private rooms, two of these being on the ground floor leading on to the hall. The rooms are all furnished with great taste. There are also sixteen single bedrooms, all well furnished and commodious,and those are reached by means of a corridor distinctly apart frem the family apartments, a very largo landing (on which there is an ingenious apparatus for extinguishing fire) separating the two divisions. The kitchen is supplied with two extensive ranges of local make, Mr Watters, of Christchurch, being the manufacturer ; and the baths upstairs are supplied with hot water from this source. The kitchen arrangements have been so carried out that there is no chance of an unpleasant odour of cooking pervading other parts of the hotel, and the servants’ hall and rooms, in which the domestic work is carried on, are entirely separate from the main building. To conclude, it may be said that this hotel is one of the most faithfully built houses in Christchurch, or even in the colony, which is duo principally to Mr James Heath, contractor, who was, for the most part, architect of the entire structure. Messrs Prudhoe and Cooper were the builders, Mr S. P. Andrews did the plastering, Messrs Kay and Wood being the carpenters, and Mr White supplied the furniture. As stated above, the hotel will be opened on July Ist.