HOTEL 1829
One Walter J. Maguire owns and manages Hotel 1829. He and his wife "Pete" are natives of New Jersey, living in C.A. for some 10 to 12 years, since acquiring Hotel 1829. Yes, you have guessed it. The hotel was built in 1829, and it shows it. Stucco, brick and some frame. All doors and windows remain wide open. At least until a hurricane comes. The original tile floors remain, showing considerable wear. It has a mammoth combination kitchen, bar and dining room, with built-in ovens and walls hung with quart to five gallon shining copper cooking utensils. All cooking is done with charcoal and gasoline stoves. The second floor sills are closely spaced and exposed from the first floor. I don't know the dimensions of these sills, but if one loosened and fell on one, one would never know.
The hotel has a honey of a patio, like you see in travel bureau literature. All first floor doors are double and fasten from the inside with glorified gatehooks that look like the twisted lightning rods on Mrs. Bridge's brick house west of Greencastle, only bigger and heavier. The one hanging on the inside of one of the front main double doors was about three feet long and the "staple" it hooked into was three-quarter inch solid iron. Hurricane insurance, probably.
Hotel 1829 has a maximum capacity of 24, although if remodeled for efficiency and waste spaces done away with, it could accommodate 124. Reservations are required and one hour notice for lunch and three hours for dinner. Rates: $10 per day per person, and up.
C.A. is a free port. Silverware, souvenirs, straw hats and sandals, cigarettes, wines and liquors and vegetable markets are predominant, but the greatest of these are wines and liquors. Old Gold cigarettes and the other three or four principal brands retail at 90 cents per carton, no tax. French champagnes like Moet and Somebody, $3.50 per bottle.
By the time we got there, the market was about closed. It is quite a place. It occupies a short block for length. The market has a roof; the sides and ends are open and the stalls are made of cement. A few stragglers remained with odds and ends of oranges, bananas, limes (4 for 5 cents), lemons, potatoes, peppers and things of that sort.