The city of Savannah, with its balmy air, its far famed Bonaventure Cemetery, its pretty parks, broad streets and many natural attractions (acknowledged to be one of the most attractive Southern cities), was long avoided by many pleasure tourists, because it had no hotel worthy of a city claiming fifty thousand inhabitants and doing a business of over one hundred and thirty millions of dollars annually.
Savannah is the greatest cotton port in the world—New Orleans excepted. Savannah has deep water and good docks. Sometimes as many as thirty English ships are in this port at the same time. They take cotton direct to foreign ports. Savannah is easily approached from North and South: presently it is to have communication with the west—direct from Kansas City. When these and other contemplated improvements are made, Savannah expects to experience an era of great prosperity. It is predicted that the city will double its population in the next ten years.
Anyone who doubts that Savannah is steadily moving forward in prosperity has only to take a glimpse at the tax returns made to the city treasurer for 1891, to have the doubt quickly dispelled. In 1890, the returns of personal property footed up $9,948,048, and in 1891 they were considerably over $10,000,000, the increase being about $500,000. The banks alone in ’91 made returns of $506,000 in excess of 1890. This shows that there is a great demand for banking institutions. Real estate has increased $1,300,000.
Such being the present condition and future prospects of Savannah, it was time that some movement were made for the better entertainment of visitors, so at last the citizens put their heads together and concluded that no matter how rich a city is in natural attractions, the climax of success is only capped by railway facilities and first class hotels.
Mr. H. B. Plant, head of the Plant System, furnished the railway facilities, and now the citizens of Savannah have supplied the hotel. They formed a stock company, subscribed a million of dollars and opened the De Soto, two years ago, which proved to be exteriorly one of the handsomest houses in this country, if not in the world, and interiorly one of the best appointed—in keeping with the American idea.
Savannah never had a habit of going across the seas for hotel names. It boasts of no Victoria, no Buckingham, no Imperial, but it has a Screven, named after a prominent Georgia family; a Pulaski, named for a military hero, and now a De Soto, in honor of the discoverer of the Mississippi river. Savannah is nothing if not patriotic. It has a Monterey square, a Forsyth park, and among its monuments are the noble columns erected to perpetuate the memory of three revolutionary heroes—Jasper, Green and Pulaski.
The De Soto cost a round million of dollars. It occupies, but does not literally “cover, an entire block of ground,” as the writer of the little descriptive pamphlet has it. The house is built in the form of a hollow square, with entrances on three sides. This plan of construction was adopted to leave a large open court in the centre, thus securing an ample supply of light and air; and the plan has succeeded to perfection.
The dining-room, which seats nearly four hundred guests, has air and light its full length, on both sides. Some of the bedroom doors, instead of wooden panels, have panels of ground glass to let light into the halls. The bedroom in which these lines are written is fifteen feet square, not counting a deep recess for the windows, of which there are two, each measuring seven feet six by four feet six. There is also a transom over the door. To such an extent has this love of light been carried that even the elevator, instead of being built with solid sides, has sides of strong, open wire work, through which light and air stream freely.
The interior, while being on a broad, liberal, yes, a luxurious scale, has no striking novelties. It is modelled after the style of the large modern American hotels of the first-class. There is a large and splendid “office” with reading-room, smoking-room, writing-room, and small parlors branching off; there are open fires and all the etceteras of convenience and luxury; the whole ground floor is marble-tiled, the corridors are ten feet wide and richly carpeted; they lead on each side to an inviting veranda; there is pure water from an artesian well and the sanitary arrangements are said to be scientifically correct.
The parlor, with its onyx tables, its gold-framed chairs, delicate carpets, its richly-embossed furniture covering, its mirrors, electric lights and the light-colored walls minus anything that suggests a work of art, is, to my mind, rather cold and stiff. I prefer the home-like drawing-room of the Imperial Hotel in Aberdeen, Scotland, with its profusion of fresh flowers, its cabinets and pretty things, or say, the drawing-room of the Langham Hotel, London, rich and pleasing in subdued, dark colors; but the De Soto is an American hotel, it is kept after the American methods, and without doubt the parlor suits to perfection those for whom it is furnished—then why should anybody criticise its decorations?