“The rotunda is a grand assembly hall with its polished floors, rich carpets and hangings, antique vases and bric-a-brac, divans and luxurious lounges, as little like a hotel office as the ‘east room’ of the White House is like a railway station. The apartment is seventy-eight feet square and is thirty feet from the floor to the ceiling. The massive doors are of Spanish mahogany, highly polished, encasing heavy plates of bevelled glass, the frames are carved in designs of great beauty. Thirteen marble columns support a balcony that looks over from the second floor, around which is a carved rail, also in Spanish mahogany.
“The Moorish and Spanish styles which prevail in the architectural work do not always obtain in the decorations and furnishings—the divans in the rotunda were once in the Tuileries salons, and there is an original portrait in oil of Louis XIV. of France, also a clock of the same period. The paintings are varied in design, as they are in age and history, and every one, every antique and cabinet, has its history. On one wall is a beautiful canvas, the Return from the Masquerade, on another, Wine, Woman, and Song, these suggest the gay side of life, while some of the old faded examples of the school of long ago carry one back to the old masters. Two dwarfs in bronze that suggest the Black Forest legends guard the entrance to the hall of the grand salon, and near them are two Japanese vases, six feet high, which were exhibited at the Vienna exposition.
“Mirrors in antique frames rich in gilded carvings are on the walls, massive doors in bevelled glass lead to parlors, halls, libraries, and writing rooms, electric lights are imbedded in the ceilings and walls, and hang down in chandeliers. This is the rotunda. The business office occupies the smallest corner, as if it was of the smallest importance in a hall so replete with ornament and so devoted to comfort and luxury. The telegraph and ticket offices are also in the rotunda, and everything that pertains to the more prosaic business ideas—but they do not intrude upon the dreamy existence that obtains from the antique surroundings.
“The grand parlor is magnificent. Every nook and corner has some dainty bit to show a woman’s hand has been here, and in all the grand apartment shows what might have been done by a princess in her own house. It was a woman’s design that this divan should have growing flowers from its centre, and between the seat-arms, that roses and calla-lilies should mingle their perfume where beauty holds sway. Her idea that this cabinet, three hundred years old, should be brought from some castle in Seville or Salamanca to ornament this salon. It is an exquisite piece with inlaid woods, ebony, pearl, and ivory, with quaint little paintings under marvellously clear glass in the carved panels. The bronzes, gildings, and inlaid woods of the cabinets contrast with the white and gold of the surrounding decorations in pleasing effect. The white and gold of the upholstery and the hangings have their beauty enhanced by the shaded electric lights in ground glass, softly tinted, that are set in the arched dome above; the light falls on these cabinets, tables inlaid in a hundred woods and pearl and ivory, bric-a-brac and candelabra from every land. Paintings not from this shop or that, but from the old masters to salon celebrities of modern times. One is a portrait of Marguerite de Valois and another of the Duc de Savoy. On the mantels and cabinets are some beautiful, exquisitely chased ewers and drinking cups in silver, and busts of Elizabeth of England and Mary, Queen of Scots, in very rare silver bronze.
“There is marble statuary in exquisite designs from the chisels of the best sculptors—some Sedan chairs with the eagle of France in their decorations.
“The drawing-room is a museum of beautiful things, embracing fine contrasts, rich harmonies, and pleasant innovations that render it indeed ‘a joy forever.’ Here, there is an inlaid table which once graced the Tuileries, as did also three ebony and gold cabinets. On the table is a rare bit of sculpture, ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ in Carrara marble. There, are a sofa and two chairs that were owned by Marie Antoinette. A set of four chairs may be seen that belonged to Louis Philippe. Then there are numerous French and Japanese cabinets, and above each is suspended a dazzling crystal mirror.
“There are eight cabinets of antique pattern that have been brought from this or that province of old Spain, gathered in their travels by Mr. and Mrs. Plant, and not, as I have said, ordered from this factory or that, in the ordinary way of the modern hostelrie.
“The carpet—scarlet, with its black lions rampant, made in France—is a replica of one of Louis XIV., and covers the entire floor of this splendid salon, in which are chairs of gold and silk and plush of the same era—as there are also tapestries of incalculable values and richness that have hung in palaces before they came to this one. The writing and reading rooms just off the rotunda are furnished in the same unique manner—one which might be called ‘the Louis XIV. room’ has all its decorations and appointments of the era of that monarch; these are replicas, or in some cases originals.
“In the grand chambers the style is not less regal; in magnificence these surpass anything I have ever seen; no two of them are alike. They range in size from the grand suite of complete living apartments with parlors and libraries, to the chamber for two, with silken hangings of gros-grain watered silk, in white and delicate rose color; a canopied dressing-case, as dainty as the bride who may stand before it to attire her pretty self for the grand halls outside her door. The guest rooms on the floors above have every convenience known to modern inventive genius, including telephone connection with the office and through a ‘central’ to every other room in the house. A grand hall-way extends from south to north seven hundred feet, passing through the rotunda. Just south of the rotunda is the grand staircase, with its life-size bronzes, holding groups of electric lights, and near by are the elevators to the upper floors. The north hall passes from the rotunda by the grand parlors to the gracefully rounding curve of the solarium till it ends, where shall I say it ends?—in modern parlance at the dining-hall, but what might be the banquet-room of a Moorish king, with its lofty dome and arches that rest on fluted pillars.
“There is no more striking feature than the table porcelain. These are exquisite works of ceramic art. The plates are of infinite variety. You may have your beef on a very charming bit of French porcelain, your salad on a reproduction of an old Vienna plate of semi-Saracenic pattern, your ice on one of the little plates designed by Moritz Fischer and copied elsewhere, your coffee in a very perfect repetition of one of Wedgewood’s simple and lovely bordered cups. In fact, there is no end to the variety of these lovely porcelains. And just here I may add that the cooking and the service are unexceptional. The table is of the very best class and equal to that of any hotel in the world.