GOLDEN HOTELS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 12, 8 February 1909, Page 4

GOLDEN HOTELS.

HOW MILLIONAIRES ARE CATERED FOR. £l5O DISHES. X'mv York December 11. Novelists, such as Mr Upton Sinclair have recently depicted in lurid colors the luxury in which the millionaire tenants of the hotel palaces of New York Jive and have their being. But no writer's imagination has yet invented anything approaching the extravagance of the latest enterprise of one of the newest and greatest of Fifth Avenue caravanserais. In order to meet the tastes of its wealthy patrons, the management of the establishment has 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 caadelbra and door knobs. 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 linancie :. when she gave a banquet to a select few of the "four hundred," is i\o longer gorgeous enough, for the new service is to be modelled after one "which has been part of the family plate of the Duke of Westminster for many years. As each course is served, dishes made of hammered gold, of the value of £7O each, will W placed on larger dishes, valued at .Cirri), and then set before the guests.

Even now the silver used in the hotel is estimated to he worth ,01,000* and .« stall' of special repairers aud ca*ane!s is constantly engaged on it. Now, the manager says, it will prvii'iM/ prove more economical to vemvo the Ivonze fittings of the hotel with silver. fn the manufacture of silver candelabra he announces that designs will to; chosen according to the individual tastes of the tenants, who, it is satirically suggested to-day, will probably soon demand golden bathtubs, tonjuoise handbasins, and finger-bowls made, like the snuff-box in " Monti Christo," from split emeralds »

The magnificent hotels of New York have been described as intended to "provide exclusiveness for the masses," and there arc probably 200,000 rich Americans in the metropolis enjoying this exclusiveness on a scale of unexampled extravagance. One of the latest fails practised in an hotel whose name is wellknown in Europe is for the lady guests to wear dresses of feathers and llouers .harmonising with the dominant color of the dining-rooms