HOTELS THAT ARE TOWNS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2084, 31 January 1920, Page 4

HOTELS THAT ARE TOWNS.

,\ large American hotel is a city in itself wil.li its seething h:i lls and' passages and i(s infinite ea-pacily of service, writes a Bril isli visitor to New York, in the Daily Mail. An agile “bell hoy” (page) comma miners your “grips’- (Iraveilingbags) at the door, and yon walk inside. A large number of people ebb and How in busy progress,-or sit in little social groups in largo leather chairs arranged round the enormous carpels. You register at an olfice window, and walk across the marble floor to a smaller hall, where on both sidesis a row of lift doors. A “starter’’ chants : —“Express 1 to roof garden on left. Local elevator on right. All doors after tenth on left.” You stop into (lie litTle brass room and rise swiftly to_ (he fifteenth Hour. .Down softly lighted corridors you walk - silently, on deep carpets, (ill you come to your door. , The “bell hoy” (Hugs it open, deposits the hags, and vanishes. The room is" tastefully furnished, and in the neat while-tiled halh-, room (an adjunct of every room) you notice lhai ice water for drinking purposes is laid on. The most individual feature is the room door, in which is a smaller convex door, faced by a similar convex door on the outside. Only one of these doors (-an he opened al a time, and since the space between them contains book's and shelves, you can he given your mail, laundry mid pressed clothes without the ■ interruption of an hotel servant. You drop downstairs again and wander, from the drug si ore (chemist’s shop) with its soda fountain, to the cigar shop, the haberdasher's, the florist’s, the news stand, and then past (he clicking Western Union telegraph office, past the tele-phone-booths, and the line of “house lelephoues.” past mail and im | airy, and reservation (hooking and cashier’s windows; past restaurant and tearoom; past the information bureau, where an aieti young woman will tell you everything about anything. Then you go downstairs to the while-and golden glitter of the barbers’ shop, and then pass a subterranean lunch counter, a ’■'shoeshine" stand, a chiropodist’s oflice, and go up again to the first door, where are the library,and the busy “stenographers”; the latter will act as-your clerks all day. if you so desire. Past (he Turkish baths and the swimming bath, and the hospital, and the writing rooms you go, and up 20 floors in a lift to the root garden under the roof, and not above it. There, sitting'on a balcony, with the whole rectangular plan of New York below you with its. incessant whine of noise, you may gaze amt across the Hudson to the green hilts of New -Jersey, or look at the tall umlti-wiiulbwed pillars of stone rising from the heart of the Hat-roof-ed city while a band inside plays a dreamy Oriental song.