HOTEL WINDSOR.
The Hotel Windsor is in Victoria street, only five minutes’ walk from Victoria Station, two minutes’ walk from the American Legation, a few steps from Westminster Abbey, Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, St. James’s Park and the Home Office. The dining-room of the Windsor is an especially cheerful apartment and it overlooks the pretty garden of a church. The great plate glass windows in this dining-room are larger than the windows in any other hotel, so large that they are only moved up or down by ropes to which handles are attached. They let in plenty of daylight, almost as much as streams freely into the dining-room of the Hotel Pasaje, Havana, which opens on the street, and which is not encumbered with windows at all.
The Hotel Windsor is not only kept by a “proprietor” in the accepted American use of that term, but the furniture, the building and the ground on which it stands are owned in fee (“freehold,” as English people call it), by two men, J. R. Cleave and V. D. B. Cooper, the first named being the actual and active manager of the house, who makes it his home, the title of the firm being J. R. Cleave & Co. The premises include fifteen thousand square feet of ground, which, without the imposing ten-story stone structure upon it, is valued at forty-five thousand pounds sterling—not far short of a quarter million dollars.
The Windsor is fortunate in its location. A shilling cab takes you to any theatre or to the shopping centre, and ’buses pass the door every minute for Charing Cross, Trafalgar square and the Strand. Time, ten minutes; fare, two cents, inside or out.
There is a lift at the Windsor of modern style; the house is lighted by electricity; there are Turkish and swimming baths on the lower floor; to avoid disagreeable odors the kitchen is at the top of the house; the bedrooms are scrupulously clean, the cuisine and wines are of the best quality, and the charges moderate. You can live at the Windsor, if you prefer it, on the American plan—rate, about four dollars a day. The European plan is also moderate in price for rooms and meals—a delicious lunch for sixty cents: choice service.
If this is the description of a model hotel, worthy in every respect of the best patronage, “that,” as humorist Gilbert says, “is the idea I intended to convey.” The Windsor was built about twelve years ago. Address, J. R. Cleave, manager, Victoria street, Westminster, S. W.