5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 103
122222222 6 The luxury hotels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be
2 Tracing tracks described as the most glamorous, colourful and, at the same time, me,
N
3 Illusion and reality at work in the ‘opaque sites of the psychological topography of modern life’.1 These
4 lobby so-called ‘grand hotels’2 always lead to a wide range of associations:
ciations:
5 Rajesh Heynickx show business and mob deals, richness and adultery, honeymoon neymoon and
6 suicide. Offering a home away from home, they succeeded ed in fusing
TIO
7 opposites together. A personal sphere and anonymity, y, the familiar and
8 the unfamiliar, illusion and reality constantly mixed d in the vertical
9 cities grand hotels were.
w Yet, these hotels not onlyy imitated the urban
urba
10 fabric by installing
stalling within their
th walls a swimming ng pool, shops and
FS
1 restaurants.
nts. Hotel guests were
we also, like everyy newcomer in a cit city,
2 subjecteded to a (dis)assembling
(dis)assembli of their identity. ity. They obtained a new
3 identity
ity in the form of a depersonalized
d room
oom number, or deliberately
IBU
4 decideded to carve one
o out when checking in. Of course, even a self-
5 chosen
hosen identity was not n always coterminous
minous with easy, insinstant success.
6 In a dark reflection on living at home me in the post-1945 world, Theodor
7
8
9
O Adorno
Adorno argued that
struggle to situate
homelessnes 3
homelessness.
th hotels epitomized ized the twentieth-century,
twentieth
situa oneself in thee world. They embod
resultless
embodied an existential
RO
20 The exexact place in the hotel where, during tthe nineteenth and
1 twentieth centuries, old identities (un)succesfully reconfigured,
dentities were (un)su
2
3
4
5
6
TR was the hotel lobby. Positioned
and the
public gateway to private
pub
itioned between the public realm (the street)
th private spheree (the hotel room), tthe lobby became a semi-
rivate places. It was tthe place were the visitor left
his/her story at thee front desk. Lift-boys,
hi Lift-b
keys instigated a specific type of inte
telephone systems and hotel
interaction between the hotel guests
P
7 and turned the lobby into the st stage set of a regime. Thinking with
DIS
8 Michel Foucault, that the (honeymoon) hotel was a
ault, who stated tha
9 heterotopia, stands in relation to other sites, but at the
a, a place that stand
30 same time neutralizes or inverts these relations, the lobby
me mirrors, neutral
T
1 can be seen as the incubato
incubator of such ‘other place’: it simultanously
2 split and recomposed individual
i identities.4
3 Adorno
dorno and Fouca
Foucault were certainly not the first to draw
1S
4 attention to the hotel
hote as a modern play, of which the lobby was the
5 first act
ac or prelude and which reached its finale in the individual
6 guest-rooms. In the Weimar Berlin of the early 1920s, the German
OR
7 Jewish thinker Siegfried Kracauer also tried to understand the
8 topography of modern culture by looking at the Großstadhotel.
9 Kracauer considered
co hotels as miniature models of the international
40 metropolis
metrop and its global culture. The exchange of information,
1 services
service and goods triggered by the consuming hotel guests reflected
2 the fragmentation
fr and anonymity of a society driven by mass media
3 and tourism. Those who were sitting in the lounge chairs of the lobby
TF
4 were participating in a dissolution of an old collectedness. In a series
5 of essays for the Frankfurter Zeitung, Kracauer illuminated that
6 process by opposing the lobby to the traditional church. The rise of a
7 sensus communis, the fusion of individuals in a corporate ‘we’, was
8222 possible in the church but not in the lobby, where the fellow hotel
NO
103 Illusion and reality at work in the lobby
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 104
6.1 Still of the lobby space
in the film Grand Hotel, by
1
Edmund Golding, 1932 2
N
3
4
5
6
TIO
7
8
9
1
1
2
3
IBU
4
5
6
O guest was a stranger, although
alth he slept under
der the same roof: ‘‘W
‘Whereas
7
8
9
RO
in the house of God it is an awaiting within thin the tension that
tha reveals 2
the
he preliminariness of names, in the hotel lobby it is a retreat
retr into the 1
TR community char
groundlessness’.5
unquestioned groun
The hotel flân
flâneur, Kracauer, was as touched by the ffact that a
characterized by traditional
(Gemeinschaft) was overwhelmed
belonging (Gem verwhelmed by a m
competitive and impersonall organization of mer
and a sense of
ditional practices an
more individualistic,
mere society (Gesellschaft).
2
3
4
5
6
TP
However, it was not so much
Howe between the congregation in
ch the tension be 7
DIS
traditional church and
the trad image, the lobby, where an old
nd its inverted imag 8
solidarity was undermined peripheral equality of social masks,
ned by the peripher 9
that turns Kracauer’ss reflection into an original one. Its originality 3
sstems from the methodological ambition underneath a pessimistic
ethodological ambiti 1
sociology: Kracauer’s
uer’s examination of the lobby did fit in a quite original 2
phenomenologicall project. Just as he had done with department stores 3
and employment offices,, he tried to define the lobby as a spatial image, 4
a Raumbild,, which he considered to be a hieroglyphic that, once 5
deciphered, reveal the basis of social reality.6
ed, would revea 6
OR
Kracauer,
acauer, who was tratrained and had been active as an architect, 7
believed time could be dissected through a secure analysis
ved that his own tim 8
of its spatial images. Co
Collecting information via detailed, inductive 9
observations
servations would make it possible to look into the social record of a 4
solve all its riddles. Therefore, it is not that surprising
society and to solv 1
that his work on the hotelhalle was originally intended to form a 2
chapter in his book-length essay ‘The detective novel: a philosophical 3
TF
Just as the detective in a novel tried to identify the motives
tractate’. Ju 4
of perpetrators
rpetra through the recovering of tiny details, not infrequently 5
with the hotel as a crime scene, Kracauer attempted to decode 6
underlying social tendencies by looking at what seemed to be, at first 7
sight, marginal cultural phenomena.
sight 8
NO
104 Rajesh Heynickx
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 105
122222222 As this essay will demonstrate, there can exist a rather comforting
forting
2 parallel between detective work and historical research. Both are re meant
N
3 to offer sollutions to ‘a mystery’ by collecting material evidence ce or
4 recovering facts by interrogating (written) witnesses.7 Just as the he
5 detective novel is not just about the crime, but mostly focuses cuses on the
6 story of its detection, I will pay attention to how diverging ng texts and
TIO
7 images can inform us about the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
ntieth-century
8 lobbies of grand hotels. Besides considering on what at basis the lobby
9 was a place where identities
id became (re)configured,ed, I will provide a
10 critical account
unt of tracks that
tha are useful for writing
ting hotel history.
FS
1 More exactly,
ctly, the following series of sources will be scrutinized: a
2 postcard,d, two pictures and a painting. All of them contain specific
speci
3 narratives,
tives, telling us more
mor about how the materiality and the t
IBU
4 illusionary
onary image-building
image- of the lobby collided,
ollided, and, as we will see,
5 they
hey therefore enable us to canvas identity-related
entity-related issues, such as
6 gender, globalization,
globalizatio material cultureure and urban development.
devel
7
8
9
O The trace ofo a lady
Taxi tickets, a tourist guide, umbrellas,
brellas, unregister
unregistered meetings and
RO
20 flakes of skskin: hotels, a literary 2001, are containers of
ary critic wrote in 20
1 leading up to otherr traces’.8 On the other
‘traces lea oth hand, besides
2
3
4
5
6
TR collecting
collectin traces, the hotel
disseminated
dissem
vistor
trace. The
tel itself can be seen as a trace, or better: a
he Dutch writer Cees
visto of hotels, oncee noted that he could
sleeping
sle
Cee Noteboom, a notorious
coul read ‘the poetry of all thoses
collecti of hotel letter paper’.9 Other
places’ in his ‘useless collection
persed souvenirs of hotels
examples of dispersed h are postcards, depicting the
P
7 entire hotel building
ilding or, as often happened, placing the lobby at centre
DIS
8 stage. Being bought, written on, stamped, adressed, sent, received,
9 read, discarded,
rded, forgotten or remembered,
re those postcards presented,
30 worldwide,de, the hotel’s self-image,
self- and this from the end of the
T
1 nineteenth
enth century until the th breakthrough of hotel websites in the
2 middle
dle of of the 1990s.
1990s
3 A postcard of the lobby of the Parisian hotel Bergère, from 1923,
1S
4 shows us a lobby
obby in the
t evening (fig. 6.2). Located in the very heart
5 of Paris,
Pari between the Grand Boulevard and the Opera Garnier, people
6 sit in lounge chairs and chat, read or write. Unmistakenly, this image
OR
7 is a product of secure impression management. The angle of the
8 picture is well
w chosen. Packed between the glass-roofed ceiling and
9 the mosaic floor, the Bergère lobby unfolds as a cosy living room.
40 One person,
pe a man writing behind a table, particularly draws the
1 viewer’s
viewer’ attention. A spontaneous question pops up: (on) what is
2 he writing?
wr
3 It is not unthinkable that he is writing a postcard with the
TF
4 Bergère lobby on its front. That would create an inkling of
5 perspectives: the person who is writing writes on a card that portrays
6 a lobby with a man writing on a card. Such production of an image
7 within an image is a known literary and pictorial technique, called
8222 mise en abyme, commonly used to insert a narrative power into a
NO
105 Illusion and reality at work in the lobby
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 106
6.2 Postcard of the lobby
space in the Hotel Bergère,
1
Paris 2
N
3
4
5
6
TIO
7
8
9
1
1
2
3
IBU
F
4
5
6
O scene by enabling
writing
abling the scene tto create a dialogue
to the card, one could indeed
ue with itself.10 App
indee say that a coree element of the scene,
ng man, becomes an empowering narrative. ative. He helps to
Applied
scen the
7
8
9
RO
illuminate
nate the postcard’s
postcar framing story: in this lobby there reigns a 2
comfortable
omfortable and secure
secur atmosphere. The effect of such a tactic t cannot 1
TR be underestimated. For the person receiving the card, the
identification with the depicted lobby
feels comfortable
comfortabl through the idea
must have written
wri
dea that the person who
the card exactly
in a homelike environment.
th
obby becomes much easier. She or he
w sent the card
ctly there, just as the man at the table,
2
3
4
5
6
P
Postcards
P showing thee lobby on their front
fr not only presented an 7
DIS
attractive
attractiv image that charmedarmed people, eventually
event seducing them to 8
become future clients. On their back, in the th form of brief notes, they 9
also gave birth to a social
ocial history of those
tho who visited the lobby. That 3
T
happened
h throughh singular reflections such as, ‘This is where daddy 1
stays when he is at work’, or the morem standard, ‘A beautiful place. 2
Many greetings to everyone’. With it offering such idiosyncratic 3
1S
vestiges, it is not so surprising
prising that
th the deconstructivist Jacques 4
Derrida useded the postcard
p as a central metaphor in one of his attacks 5
nivocal character of history.11 Nonetheless, in the case of the
on the univocal 6
OR
card depicting
picting the Parisian lobby, we are given, by its author – the 7
American
rican or English lady
lad ‘Edith’ – accurate and telling information 8
about
out her journey (fig. 6.3). The card even contains a glimpse of some 9
family
mily matters: 4
1
Sorry I’m too sleepy to write a letter. Reached the Hotel Bergère 2
this
thi afternoon after a very pleasant trip. Got a note from aunt 3
TF
Mary at
a boat. Has not yet sold Mapledene and will be glad to see 4
me. Uncle
Un Will in good bodily health. Lovingly, Edith 5
6
Of course, these few sentences, meant for a close relative and 7
probably
prob written in the lobby where she had bought the card, ask for 8
NO
106 Rajesh Heynickx
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 107
122222222
2
N
3
4
5
6
TIO
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
IBU
F
4
5
6
7
8
9
O
RO
20
1
2
3
4
5
6
TR
6.3 Back of postcard
lobby space in
tcard of
f the
n the Hotel
Bergère, Paris
is
h addi
additional data. We want to be informed better about the trip and,
most of all, are curious
m
background. Was
b
ous about Edith’s educational and social
as Mapledene the nam name of a big family estate or a
P
7 favourite horse?? Did she travel iin a group? Was she staying in the
DIS
8 Bergère to go few minutes away from the hotel?
o the opera, just a fe
9 The answers
nswers to all these questions
q are hard, even impossible, to
30 find. Thee only certain thing is that, after arriving in the French
T
1 capital,, Edith was sometim
sometimes craving for information about the milieu
2 she had left. As for mamany other hotel guests writing home during the
3 1920s, the lobby, with its souvenir shop and postbox, functioned as a
1S
4 membrane between
etween a native community and a new world being
5 discovered as a tourist.12 Moreover, from 1900 on, the lobby could
discov
6 even turn into
int a hub for tourism and the mass transport this
OR
7 expanding industry
indu was leaning on. The same nineteenth-century
8 companies that built railways and stations constructed and owned
9 hotels. In many
m of their lobbies, one could find timetables indicating
40 the arrival
arr and departure times of trains.13 And, in the 1950s, an
1 American
Americ flight company such as Pan Am, trying to conquer the
2 American
Amer interior market, opened new selling points in hotel lobbies.
3 The lobby became a place of arrival and the starting point for a new
TF
4 journey,
j within a quite dense, often international network. Or, as the
5 historian Paul Fussell sharply remarked in his study on British inter-
6 war tourism: ‘tourism diminishes the world to the space of a hotel
7 lobby and a picture postcard, and renders travel the exercise of
8222 running in place’.14
NO
107 Illusion and reality at work in the lobby
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 108
Through the intimate link that grew between the lobby, tourism 1
and transport, Edith fully belonged to the age of speed, exhilaration 2
N
and vertigo that pervaded Europe between 1900 and 1914.15 There 3
was no time to write a letter. And, contrary to what the image on 4
Edith’s postcard suggested, lobbies could hardly be identified with a 5
comforting quietness. The constantly changing scene of an 6
TIO
international lobby knew its own beat, produced by chatter, bells and 7
muzak. There was a perpetual motion, a rhythmic chaos of people ple 8
arriving and leaving the hotel. Still,
S despite this surrealistic jumble,
umble 9
order was installed and maintained in the t lobby. For that, little
ittle white 1
FS
index cards, telephone ne claviatura[[AQ9]],
claviatura[[AQ9] switchboards and nd a small 1
army of employees were responsible. The Th persons and lugage
ugage wafting
waft 2
into the hotel faceded constraint. Men and a women weree filed. Suitcases, 3
IBU
if not registered, were marked with a unique hotel sticker, ticker, the hotel’s 4
emblematic trademark,
rademark, when ent entering or leaving the building.16 The 5
hotel was caught ‘cont revolution’,177 of which the lobb
aught up in the ‘control lobby 6
O became the epicentre.
Hotel
otel notepaper, hotel stickers and hotel
picturesque
resque images and positive
p
tel postcards: by carrying
slogans, they
carr
ey broadcast an open,
op
7
8
9
RO
brightt world, accessible
accessibl to everyone. That at was, of course, a myth.
m 2
Even
ven Edith, if we presume
pres she was a well-to-do American, would have 1
TR experienced a lesser freedom in some
than in the Bergère.
Bergèr In America, she
of restrictions, sometimes
lobby. The reason?
rea
s resulting
Being a woman.
was primarily a man’s world,
me hotels in her home
hom country
he could have met a century-old set
ting in exclusion, when
wh entering the
man. In the United States, the lobby
d, and that had been so from the moment
2
3
4
5
6
P
the American
Am hotel industry,ry, which was trendsetting
tren for the niche of 7
DIS
the grand
gran hotels, started d to grew explosively during the first three 8
decades
d of the nineteenth centur 188
nth century. 9
That the lobby of American luxury hotels developed in its early 3
T
days as a male preserve,
d serve, and in some w way continued so during the 1
twentieth century, ry, had to do with its initial function of an exchange 2
building. In the lobbies 1820s and 1830s, men read local and
bbies of the 182 3
1S
foreign newspapers, tracked ked the price of stocks, absorbed political news 4
and gossiped ed with friends. Being a gathering place for men, solidifying 5
a new, middle-class, busin
business elite, the lobby [[AQ10]]felt together with 6
OR
a male gaze to which womewomen, according to the ruling etiquette, were 7
not supposed to be exp exposed. They had to obey a strict code when 8
entering semi-public places. Lowered, averted eyes were a sign
tering public or sem 9
of chastity. Only prprostitutes – for whom hotels were indeed a favourite 4
working terrain19 – were associated with a direct gaze, the willingness 1
20
to offer sexual exchange.
ex 2
To avoid women encountering the male gaze, luxury hotels of the 3
TF
1830s had sseparate family or women’s entrances. Besides that, the 4
luxuryy hote
hotel also installed a gender ideology of separate spheres 5
through the creation of specialized rooms, such as a gentlemen’s 6
parlour or a ladies’ drawing room. The boundaries were initially very
pa 7
strict and influential, for a long time the template for middle-class 8
NO
108 Rajesh Heynickx
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 109
122222222 hotels. But, even more than in the form of a prescriptive planningg of
2 the architectural reality, the gender ideology seemed to persist in the
N
3 minds of people. That explains why, sometime in the 1950s, feminist
4 women journalists holding a convention in the Rice Hotel in n Houston,
5 Texas, wanting to be informed when there was a phone call for them,
6 had to rebel against the hotel management, which told them hem it did not
TIO
7 page women in the lobby. The management, as became me clear, based its
8 decision on the conviction that no decent woman would want her name
9 nced in the hotel lobby.21
to be announced
10 Americaca had invented the
t luxury hotel, often en proud to present it
FS
1 as the thermometer
ermometer of a rich and unique civilization
ization – ‘It is what the
2 Forum perhaps was to Rome’,
Rom an enthusiast journalist exclaimed
exclaime in
22
2
3 1919 – but it was more reluctant to admit mit that the grand hotel was
IBU
4 also a barometer, revealing pressure tendencies
dencies and frontal
fronta boundaries
5 in
n America’s social stratosphere.
st Kracauer’s
auer’s take on the correspondence
co
6 between space and a social reality seems
eems to be proved h here. Yet,
7
8
9
O Kracauer’s analysis
analys – to a great extent
tent a journalistic snapshot
1920s actuality – also invites us to think further: what
time, when one
o of the two intersecting
s of the
wh happened over
secting poles of Kracauer’s
Kr ‘sober
RO
20 seeing’23 – the lobby’s material
rial layout or its emb
embedding social fabric –
1 altered?
2
3
4
5
6
TR A crime scene
Whe (virtually) entering
When tering the Bergère to
in 1923 can still be distinguished (fig
mosaic floor didd not disappear. Of co
today, a lot of things Edith saw
(fig. 6.4). The glass roof and the
course, with an integrated Wi-Fi
P
7 network and a panoramic lift, th the Parisian hotel has fully embraced the
DIS
8 twenty-first century. Besides ththat, the visiting public has certainly
9 become lesss exclusive than Edi
Edith’s social background must have been.
30 Also, in the eight decades since
s Edith posted her card, the Bergère’s
T
1 interior generic design, as it became part of an
or gained a more gen
2
3
1S
4
5
6
OR
7
8
9
40
1
2
3
TF
4
5
6
7 6.4 Lobby
obby
bb space off t
the
h
contemporary Bergère,
mporary Hotel Berg
8222 Paris
s
NO
109 Illusion and reality at work in the lobby
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 110
international hotel chain. Although it strived for a more blanket look, 1
the hotel management did not stop using footage of the lobby for 2
ION
publicity. Moreover, the photographic angle of today’s flashy website 3
and the one used on the enigmatic postcard are identical. The face has 4
changed, but it is still the same person. It seems to be, as an early hotel tel 5
historian wrote: ‘a hotel’s lobby is what men’s features are to the 6
physiognomist’.24 Where the physiognomist tries to assess a person’s on s 7
character from his outer appearance, especially the face, the hotel’s tel’s 8
complete ‘personality’ is announced
announ in the lobby. That’s whatt hotel 9
designers argued in the past and still do today.25 And most hotel 1
S
UT
visitors, indeed, do not
ot easily forget peculiar
pec traits of the lobby and 1
often anchor their overall opinion of a h hotel in the perception
eption of these 2
characteristics. It was exactly that line
lin of thinking thee product designer
designe 3
OF
Philippe Starck cherished
herished when
whe he was told, in 2007,, that the lobby he 4
designed for the Royalton Hotel in New York Cityy – an iconic landmar
landmark 5
of 1990s hotel
tel design – was dismantled
dis after being
eing absorbed by a n new 6
RIB
6.5 Lobby of the Willard Hotel hotel group: ‘I am not sad for
fo me. I am sad for the people who ha had 7
in Washington, by Frances
Benjamin Johnston, 1904 memoriesies of the hotel.’26 8
9
RO
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
4
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
T
8
NO
110 Rajesh Heynickx
,5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 111
122222222 Judged as being passé and therefore demolished was one fate te
2 hotels could face from the late 1980s on. Another one was being ng forced
ION
3 to incorporate new technology, or being redesigned to line up p with the
4 profitable sameness of a hotel chain. Yet, besides the scenarios
5 unfolding in the Bergère and the Royalton, there existed a third
6 possibility. This plot began with the gradual dissolution in the late
7 1960s and could be followed, a couple of decades later, r, by a nostalgia-
8 driven resurrection. That was what happened with the Willard Hotel,
9 merica’s hotel’ (fig. 6.5), located in thee heart of downtow
known as ‘America’s downtown
10 Washington n and of which ththe earliest structuress go back to 1816. If one
S
UT
1 lobb taken in 1904, grandeur is the key word.
looks at a picture of the lobby
2 ric columns – a clich
The Doric cliché returning in many any grand hotels – tturn the
3 lobby into a temple, almo
almost epic in quality.y. From silk-cover
silk-covered easy
OF
4 s, doorknobs chiselled by hand and marble pavement, a
chairs,
5 triumphant splendour resounds.27 However,
riumphant splendou owever, in a picture oof the lobby
6 taken in 1981, this palatial universee has collapsed into debris. What
RIB
7 once was the place
pla where you could d find everybody who
w was anybody –
6.6 The lobby of the Willard
8 Hotel in decay a legend, promulgated
promu by publicists
ists for the hotel, wrongly
wr holds that
9
RO
20
1
2
3
4
5
6
TP
7
8
9
30
1
2
3
1S
4
5
6
OR
7
8
9
40
1
2
3
TF
4
5
6
7
8222
NO
111 Illusion and reality at work in the lobby
, 5656 HOTEL LOBBIES-A3_rev_189x246 mm 29/09/2011 13:20 Page 112
the political term ‘lobbying’ originated here28 – became a dump yard 1
and a shelter for homeless people. 2
N
In 1986, the Willard Hotel was saved from the wrecking ball and 3
got a top-to-bottom, long-lasting restoration. The lobby regained its 4
grandeur and, besides being an exclusive reception area for diplomats, s, 5
it now offered a stage to top musical ensembles from around the 6
TIO
Washington Metro. Unmistakably, quite some detective work wass 7
required to bring the Willard back to its original state. Just the search 8
in Europe for the right colour olour marble
m (more than twenty-five different 9
types were used in the lobby) took a couple cou of months.29 Accurate curate 1
FS
restoration needing detailed research is one line of detective tive work in 1
the Willard case; explaining
xplaining why the ho hotel fell into decayy can be 2
another. Because a burning question emerges when looking ooking at the 3
IBU
picture with the fallen column:column where did the erosivee forces causing 4
the hotel’s decline
ecline originate? 5
One thinging first: erosive power
pow was not onlyy detectable in the th 6
O 1981 lobby (fig. 6.6). In fact, it had always been
1904. Or better: it was exactly
moulded ded the hotel into
exac the fight against
n there, including in
inst disintegration that
int a temple. The choice to turn the lobby into a
t
7
8
9
RO
sort off secular sanctua
sanctuary can be interpreted eted as a physical co control over 2
reality,
eality, an attempt to let substance and nd permanence prevail
preva over 1
TR transience. In what became known as the Gilded Age, an era of rapid
economic and population
the new American
pop growth during the late nineteenth
Americ bourgeoisie – ambitious, but also anxious,
owing to technological
tech
rapid urbanization of America
advances,
nine
es, increased immigration
immig
century,
and the
ica – found stability in the form of Doric
2
3
4
5
6
P
colum 30 The Willard functioned
columns. ctioned as a dream
drea castle, installing a sort of 7
DIS
aristocratic lineage through
aristocra ugh a material fraud with substitutes: as the 8
rosewood was papier mâché, and the shim shimmering alabaster was nothing 9
more than plaster, the he columns were ju just steel beams wrapped up in 3
T
cclassicist forms.31 1
The Potemkinian
kinian veil in the W Willard’s lobby demonstrates that the 2
Willard’s mechanical al ingenuity underwent
un a ‘fossilization in rigid 3
1S
32
traditions’ and, most off all, teaches
tea that the building history of luxury 4
hotels in general is double-sized. Besides the construction of 5
performative
ative high-rise buildings,
bu the creation of a ‘Mytho-Logic’33 or 6
OR
counter-imaginary
r-imaginary within modernity was also at stake. To launch an 7
attractive
active illusion, modern
mod technology was used without being exposed 8
fully.
lly. The dream of the architect Joseph Lux, in 1909, about future 9
hotel
otel design being ‘a synthesis of hospitals, wagon-lifts and machinery’, 4
and his prophecy, ‘Maybe
‘ in 50 years we will reach such excellent 1
34
hotels’, are just parts of the story. Besides incarnating the desire to 2
modernize
modern in a linear way, the Willard lobby became the plaything of 3
TF
succeeding historical
h regimes: the retrograde forms chosen by identity- 4
cravingng nineteenth-century
nin builders became unfit (too expensive and 5
old fashioned) for the mass tourism of the 1960s and only gained new, 6
fresh
fre attention when nostalgia spread as an ‘epidemic’ in the mid 7
1980s.
1980 From that moment on, the so-called ‘heritage industry’, of 8
NO
112 Rajesh Heynickx
