THE HOTELS OF LONDON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 3 December 1913, Page 3

THE HOTELS OF LONDON.

London is being transformed in no sphere of its busy life more mark-edly-'than in its hotels. Within the past few months a number of wellknown hostelrics have disappeared, and several ambitious schemes have been proposed to replace them. Among hotels that Jiave recently closed their doors are the Gaiety Hotel and Restaurant, the- Inns of Court Hotel, the Caprlol,. in Lower Regent street (formerly called the Chatham), and, further back still, the Continental, while the Old Ship at Greenwich; the Star and Garter at Richmond, the -Tollard in Eagle street, the Albion, in Aldersgate street, and the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden, have also been closed within the past year or 'two. The Salisbury Hotel, off Fleot street, is to be changed into an International Roman Catholic Club, but it-will still give hotel -accommodation to its members, together with an oratory as part of its equipment. But the closing of old hotels is interesting no less for the sequel—the opening of new. Architectural splendors and modern luxuries are nowadays aimed at everywhere; The development of the hotel has gone hand in hand with the development of travelling facilities. Hotels de luxe, are now, to be found in every direction within reach of a shilling and sixpenny fare from Charing Croes, which is the hub of the hotel world. During the past ten years it has been computed a sum of no less than ten million pounds has been, expended on hotel buildings in London.

Apparently it is generally accepted among hotel proprietors and shareholders, that the building business is not being overdone, although statistics might be given to prove that the great companies do not pay as. they ought to pay. "Luxury and more luxury is what is wanted," said the managing director of one large West End caravansary, "and with the enormously greater number of people who live the hotel life this luxury can be provided at very little greater ciost' than-> when people were more modest in. their wante. It is like the stores and everything else-co-operative." , ■; ' ' ' i c To meet the modern demand tor artistic surroundings in the best hotels immense sums have been expended. The' Savoy spent a million on its Strand frontage some years arm, and more recent £IOO,OOO on an addition on the 'Embankment Side, and £30,000 on a ballroom. About £BO,OOO was spent on the new Winter Gardens and Palm Courts of the Hotel Cecil, the spacious and beau-tifully-decorated-Cecil Beach as ip has been'called, which is sumptuously furnished in blue and gold and forms a charming approach to one of the finest hotel buildings in the World. The newest hotels that have come into the fashionable life of London include ihe Fife, famous for xury ; the Piccadilly Hotel, which changed hands shortly after it was built for'half a million; ancT the Waldorf. The Strand Palace Hotel, with its no-tipping regime, has a piquant interest among the latest hotel enterprises, and the proprietors have two others at present under way, which are to, be run on the same line?. One is in course of erection at Piccadilly Circus. It will have frontages to Regent street and .Shafesburv Avenue. Containing 100 bedrooms, it is being built a*rt cost , of over £1,000,000. K will be opened j m The other huge hotel of the no-tip variety, to be called the 'P^f 1 i s shortly to be built Baker street station of the Metropolitan railwav. The .undertaking includes the surrender of the valuable license of the old Buffalo Head pubhchouse in Allsop Place. Another hotel which is being erected on the site ot the historic Princess Theatre m Uxford street will soon be complete, it will cost about four hundred thousand pounds, a^/ 111^^^ 0 """ and bedrooms. An offer of £BOOO per annum has just been accepted by the London County Council as the rental, on a 99 years' lease, of a site in Aldwvcfi Crescent on which an hotel will be built. ■ The biggest hotel in the world, as w as announce*! some few ™»]» »*°> will be erected at a cost of £l,600»000, on the site of St. George Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, which has been purchased for the purpose. Mr Mallably Deedley, M.P.,.who was the buyer of the site, said that .this new hotel would be in every way worthy of the greatest city known to civilisation.