A London hotel that has, so to speak, jumped into popularity is the Savoy Hotel. It is a new house, on the Victoria embankment, with the Strand at its back, the public gardens in front and the Thames at its feet. It lies between Charing Cross and Waterloo Bridge, and for a “finger post” it has Cleopatra’s needle. There is an entrance for foot passengers from the Strand and a carriage drive from the embankment directly into the courtyard, like that of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the Grand Hotel in Paris, and the Grand in Brussels. In fact, the Savoy is more like a continental than an English house, and the owners call it “the Hotel de Luxe of the world.” Luxurious in site, size and appointments, the Savoy certainly is. It is not continental, however, in its system of charges. Nor for that matter is it like any other London hotel, its system being American. In all Parisian hotels candles are a separate charge: in nearly all European hotels attendance is a separate item, and in most hotels in the civilized world you must pay extra for baths. Not so at the Savoy. When you are told the rate for an apartment everything is included—everything of course but meals—bedroom, lights, attendance and baths. There are sixty-seven bath rooms in the house, and beneath it there is an artesian well four hundred and twenty feet deep. The boiling water, as well as the cold, like Jacobs’s bottle, is inexhaustible, and you can bathe to your heart’s content. You can hire a room for two persons for two dollars a day, or you may engage a suite at twenty dollars a day.
As to table, you may live economically at the Savoy, or you may live like a prince—a rich prince. Here are the definite and fixed rates at the Savoy:—bedrooms for one person, from seven and sixpence (nearly two dollars) per day; for two persons, ten-and-six; suites of apartments containing sitting-room, bed-room, dressing-room and private bath-room, from thirty shillings per day. Breakfast from two shillings to three-and-six; luncheon, four shillings; dinner, seven-and-six; dinner served in private rooms ten-and-six. Guests’ servants are boarded at six shillings per day; price of room according to location. If you want to live in style and enjoy, at its best, life in London, engage a suite at the Savoy, including parlor and bath-room, with private lobby and private balcony overlooking the Thames. It makes no difference what floor you select: there are “lifts” in the house, so large and luxurious as to be justly called “ascending rooms:” they run day and night. The rooms on the top floor are equal in height of ceiling to those on the lower floors, and the furniture is of the same quality throughout the house. General manager, C. Ritz; acting manager, L. Echenard.
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.