I am not surprised that its great size was an objection in his eyes, because Englishmen prefer smaller, quieter and more home-like houses; those great palaces in Northumberland avenue, London, were built rather for American patronage. But that the Auditorium looks as solid and strong as the rock of Gibraltar should not be regarded as an objection. In the eyes of most people this is a great advantage, especially when we remember the flimsy character of many of our hotels—those at the seaside, for instance, or those in small towns, to say nothing of many make-shift hotels in New York.
Among other excellent features of the Auditorium building there is this to commend it: it is called and is believed to be absolutely fireproof. The first and second story outside walls are of dark granite, the upper walls are of dark Bedford stone. The materials used interiorly are iron, brick, terra cotta, Italian marble and hard wood.
The whole structure covers one and a half acres. It stands on three streets, Michigan avenue, Wabash avenue and Congress street, with a frontage measuring seven hundred and ten feet. The height of the main building is ten stories; there are eight floors in the tower—two above the main tower—twenty stories in all; the entire height from street level to top of tower two hundred and seventy feet. Some authorities estimate the cost as high as four millions; the lowest estimate I have seen printed or heard mentioned is three million two hundred thousand dollars. It is possibly safe to say that about three millions were invested in the enterprise, and I am told that it has yielded a profit from the start—the hotel certainly has.
The structure includes a theatre called “the largest and most magnificent in the world”—the “Auditorium”—used for conventions and meetings, having a stage and what is called “the most costly organ in the world.” Of course, being Western, everything must be the biggest and costliest. There is also a Recital Hall, which seats five hundred persons. The business portion of the building includes stores on the ground floor and one hundred and thirty-six offices above, some of which are in the tower. The United States Signal Service occupies part of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth floors of the tower. From this tower you may get an extended view of the city when the fog from the lake is not dense, and when the chimneys of the town are not emitting black smoke. The best time to get a view is on a clear Sunday, when many of the factory fires are extinguished.
The Auditorium building is owned by “The Chicago Auditorium Association,” and is managed by them; the hotel proper, which forms only a part of the great structure, is managed by “The Auditorium Hotel Company,” and is a separate business concern.
It is kept on both the European and American plans. For those who choose the former there is a grand café on the ground floor; for those who prefer the latter there is a dining-room on the top floor, on which floor the kitchen is also situated. To the dining-room two elevators are constantly running. In the whole building there are thirteen elevators: in the hotel proper there are eight elevators, five for the use of guests, three for servants.
Besides the café below, and the public dining-room above, there are a number of private dining-rooms, and on the sixth floor there is a banqueting hall which will seat five hundred people and which may be called magnificent. It is built of steel, on trusses, and spans one hundred and twenty feet over “The Auditorium.” On the panelled walls are painted beautiful scenes in oil by skilled artists.
It does not lack for light, this banqueting hall; it contains four hundred electric lamps. In fact, the electric plant of the building is the largest private plant in the world—it is Western, you know. Its first cost was $100,000 and it costs to operate $175 per day. No electric department in any place, either public or private, that I have visited is cleaner, neater or more methodical in system. The tools are hung on the walls, behind glass doors. No workman may remove a tool without giving a receipt for the same and the tool must be returned to its place immediately after it has served the purpose for which it was removed or the man pays a fine.
“The office” is not a small, unimportant looking apartment like the “counting house” of an English hotel. It is after the American style, large and showy, but there is not a waste nor a wilderness of space as there is in some Chicago hotels, the “offices” in some of the Chicago houses being used not only for a public rendezvous but also for a public thoroughfare—people pass through them in going from one street to another to save themselves the trouble of walking around the block.
The floor of the office of the Auditorium Hotel is of Italian marble—mosaic work in artistic designs. To go into figures again, there are of mosaic floors in the house fifty thousand square feet, containing fifty million separate pieces of marble, each piece put in by hand. The ceiling, which is richly decorated, and from which depend numberless electric lights, is supported in the centre by five marble columns nine feet in circumference. The chairs and sofas, here and there, are of oak, plush-covered, and the walls are of nothing less luxurious than Mexican onyx, than which for the purpose probably no material is richer. Leading from the office to the parlor floor there is a white marble staircase twelve feet wide. This combination of rich materials and artistic work, with ample space, gives the Auditorium office a gorgeous, yes, a palace-like appearance.