GOLDEN HOTELS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 29 January 1909, Page 3

GOLDEN HOTELS.

Novelists such as Mr Upton Kinclair have (says tho New York correspondent of the "Daily Mail,") recently depicted in lurid colours the luxury in which the millionaire tenants of the hotel palaces of New York live and have their being. But no writer's imagination has yet invented anything approaching the extravaganca of the latest enterprise of one cf the newest and greatest Fifth-avenue caravanserais. In ordet to meet the tastes of its wealthy patrons, the management of the establishment have engaged a- staff of 25 gold and silver-smiths, who are to devote their energies henceforth to the manufacture of golden dinner services and silver candelabra and doorknobs. One of the first products of the workshop, which is situated on the second floor of the hotel, will be a dinner service of gold suitable for serving seven courses to 75 persons. Apparently the celebrated service employed by Mrs Hetty Green, the great woman financier, when she gave a banquet to a select few of the "four hundred,' is no longer gorgeous enough, for I am informed the? new service is to be modelled after one which ha__ been part of tho family plate of the Duke of Westminster for many years. As each course is served dishes "made of ham mered gold, of the value of £70 each, willl be plarcd on larger dishes, valued at £150, and then set before the guests. Even now the silver used in the hotel is estimated to be worth £60,000, and a staff of special repairers and cleaners are constantly engaged on it. Now, the manager says, it will probably prove more economical to replace the bronze fittings of the hotel with silver. In the manufacture of silver candelabra he announces that designs will be chosen according to the individual tastes of the tenants, who, it is satirically suggested, will probably soon demand golden bathtubs, turquoise hand-basins, and finger-bowls made, like the snuffbox in "Monte Cri-sto," from split emeralds. The magnificent hotels of New York have been described as intended to "provide exclusiveness for the masses, " and there are probably 200,000 rich Americans in the metropolis enjoying this e__clasiv<>ncss on a scale of unexampled extravagance. One of the latest fads practised in an hotel whose name is well known in Europe is for the lady guests to wear dresses of feathers and flowers harmonising with the dominaut colour of tho diningroom!..