Lights and Shadows of New York Life / or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City

by James Dabney McCabe

The leading hotels of the city lie very close together, the majority of them being in the vicinity of Union and Madison Squares. This is found to be an advantage, as strangers find it pleasant to visit friends who are staying at other houses. The

business of hotel keeping in New York is generally very profitable. A large outlay is required at the opening of the house, for furniture, etc., as much as from $200,000 to $500,000 being expended on the fitting up of a first-class house. The furniture, plate, etc., of the Fifth Avenue and Grand Central Hotels are valued at the latter sum for each establishment. If the house meet with success, a moderate sum will suffice to supply its current wants. The business is all cash, and large amounts of money are received daily. The annual profits of the Fifth Avenue Hotel are said to be about $250,000; those of the St. Nicholas about $200,000. Other leading houses, when well managed, are said to clear about twenty per cent. on the sum invested. Large fortunes have been made by not a few keepers of hotels in New York.

The large hotels depend entirely upon transient guests for their success. The city has, perhaps, the largest floating population in America. Thousands come and go daily, even in the summer months, and these are mostly persons who have money to spend. Bridal parties are constantly arriving, and these are not inclined to be the most economical in their expenditures. In the spring and fall, the Southern and Western merchants come to New York in great numbers to buy goods, and are among the best customers of the hotels. Thousands, on business, and for pleasure, come and go daily, and they all pour a constant stream of money into the coffers of the hotels.

The smaller houses, while they compete with their great rivals for transient custom, rely chiefly upon their permanent guests. These are filled with families who have come to them to avoid the trouble of keeping house, and who remain all through the fall, winter, and spring. In the summer they go to the watering places, so that they pass their whole lives in hotels. They are mostly persons of wealth and fashion. As may be supposed, the atmosphere of a hotel is not very favorable to domestic privacy, and such establishments are vast manufactories of scandal. People imagine that they are living privately, but their every action is subject to the inspection and comment of the other inmates of the house. The hotels are not the safest places for the

growth of the domestic virtues. Indeed, it may be said that they furnish the best means of destroying them entirely. Neither are they the best place for the training of children. This last, however, may be a minor consideration, for the wives who live at the hotels seem, as a rule, to take care that there shall be no children to need training. Small families are a necessity at such places, and they remain small in that atmosphere. If another Asmodeus could look down into the hotels of New York, he would have some startling revelations to make, which would no doubt go far to corroborate the gossip one hears in the city concerning them.

The proprietors of the city hotels are very active in their efforts to exclude improper characters from their houses, but with all their vigilance do not always succeed in doing so. One is never certain as to the respectability of his neighbor at the table, and it is well to be over-cautious in forming acquaintanceships at such places. Impure women of the “higher,” that is the more successful class, and gamblers, abound at the hotels. The proprietor cannot turn them out unless they are notorious, until they commit some overt act, for fear of getting himself into trouble. As soon, however, as his attention is called to any improper conduct on their part, they are turned into the street, no matter at what hour of the day or night.

Hotel proprietors are also the victims of adventurers of both sexes. These people live from house to house, often changing their names as fast as they change their quarters, and they are more numerous than is generally believed. One man who made himself known to the police in this way, used to take his family, consisting of a wife and three children, to the hotels, and engage the best rooms. When his bill was presented, he affected to be extremely busy, and promised to attend to it the next day. By the next day, however, he had disappeared with his family. His trunk, which had been left behind, was found to contain nothing but bricks and rags, or paper.

Another adventurer would put up at the most fashionable hotels, and when requested to pay his bills would feign madness. He would rave, and sing, and dance, call himself

Nebuchadnezzar, or George Washington, or some such personage, and completely baffle the detectives, who were for a long time inclined to believe him a bonâ fide madman. In this way he ran up a bill of one hundred and seventy-one dollars at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he never paid.

Others do not seek to obtain lodgings at the hotels, but confine their efforts to securing meals without paying for them. They get into the dining-rooms along with the crowd at the meal hour, and once in and seated at the table are generally safe. Some two years ago as many as thirty-four of this class were detected at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in a single month. These men as they leave the dining-room generally manage to secure a better hat than that they deposited on the stand in entering. Under the regime of the Lelands, the Metropolitan Hotel had a colored man stationed at the door of its dining-room, who proved more than a match for the most expert thief.