The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-10-17
THE PALACE HOTEL.

THE PALACE HOTEL.
| Visitors to San Francisco will hereafter be
struck with new and conspicuous feature In
the face of the young giant town. Seven
stories high, with base of So 25O square
feet, at the corner of Market and NeE Mont
eomery streets, now looms up the Palace Ho-
tel Its huge brick walls are ribbed from top
to bottom with tiers of bay windows, and
spotted like the sides of an ironclad with bolt
heads that clinch the great rods running over
and under and through and through the
building. making it a kind of Cyclopean open
work iron safe, filled in and lined with fire.
proof brick, where all treasure of human life
and limb should be secure against tire or
earthquake while the Peninsula lasts. 1t Is,
indeed, to this element of security that we
would draw special attention, while SO many
buildings are going up to-day in our great ci-
ties, which are disgrace in fimsy and taw-
dry pretension, and Danger In their IL fam
mable and carelessly thrown together mate
rails.
The whole work of constructing this hotel
was done by the days work and not by
| the piece, and so done carefully and well.
Seventy one partition walls of brick run from
the foundation up through the roof, and two
feet above it, and the roof is OF tin. There
are four artesian wells, two in each outer
court, with tested capacity of 2S, 600 gallons
| of water per hour. Under the center court is
$50 600 gallon reservoir, with walls OF brick
and cement five feet thick and buttressed
On the roof are seven tanks of boiler iron,
with an aggregate capacity of 128. 600 gallons.
Seven steam pumps force this water through
| the whole ht use by system OF arteries and
mains, with 1872 outlets in the corridors, pro-
| vlded in each case with three-inch hose from
4 coot .,1 xxy1th
the sidewalks without the building there are
| eight four inch fire mains connecting with the
city water, by means of which the city engines
can, if found necessary at any time, force
water into the hotel mains.
In every room and passage there is an au-
| tomato fire alarm, by which any extraordinary
heat will be instantly and noisily known at
the central Office OF the hotel; and six watch
men will patrol day and night every part OF
| the structure, and touch, half hour by half
hour, at seventy. nine stations, which will re-
port by electricity and fix the place and time
| of dereliction of the duty.
Through the heart of the hotel from top to
bottom runs fire brick tunnel, within which
| is solid brick and iron staircase opening on
each floor. In five like tunnels are five ele-
vators, run by hydraulic power, besides six
additional st .irways from garret to basement
Wood is avoided where possible In the con-
struction of kitchen, oven room, bakery,
store rooms, steam pump room, water heat
ing room, coal vlults, ash vaults and shafts,
and corridors, wood is supplanted by asphal-
tum and marble, iron beams, and brick
arches. If the Palace Hotel can burn, the
lessons of Chicago and Boston are lost, and
all human preoaution is vain against fire in
this year of our Lord eighteen hundred and
seventy five.
Architect J. P. Gaynor was instructed by
the owners to travel and study the best
hotels elsewhere before submitting his plans
for the Palace Hotel, and Warren Leland
mine host of the old New York Metropolitan
Hotel, of the Leland family, famous as hotel
keepers-was appointed lessee of the house,
and manager of all things. The summing and
ventilation of the 755 rooms for guests are
excellent, every room opening on the open
light, having fire place, and separate tiue
of four by eight inches running clear through
to the roof Every second loom has bath
room attached; most rooms are twenty feet
SQUARE, and none of less size than sixteen
by sixte en- feet. Two thousand and forty-two
ventilatng tubes open outward on the roof OF
the hotel
Three great canons or courts, cut down from
roof to base, air and tighten the mountain
building. The center court measures IA
by 81 feet, is covered with glass, made bril-
liant by the lights of the pillared verandahs
surrounding it, floor above floor; with trop-
ical garden, fountains, statues, an instrument
al band of music in the evenings and circu-
lar carriage drive ffty-four feet in diameter.
Opening upon this "earden floor there Is
an "arcade promenade four yards wide,
with a show window looking on the promen-
ade from each of the stores under the hotel.
Letter tubes, pneumatic dispatch tubes. and
electric bells knit all this miniature Palais
Royal and the hotel into one body of wonder
full life.
Ministering to the 1900 guests that can be
accommodated are four clerks, two book
keepers, a French head cook who is brilliant
particular star in his profession, five assistant
cooks of rising name, and three specialists
namely, chief confectioner from Milan, a
chief baker from Vienna, aud i" Muffin Tom"
from New York, an old negro the fame of
whose egg muffi rs and corn bread has made
him the aristocratic of his race for the last
half century from Charleston to Long Branch.
The $50 walters are to be negroes also. Forty
chambermaids and a host OF Chinese will see
that the beds and bed linen are white and
fresh. This is the kind of hotel we keep in
San Francisco.
From China and India and Japan stream
of invalids and visitors pours yearly In upon
this city, the great sanifarium of the future
for the ianguid oriental world. From the
islands of the peaceful sea, from our own east
and NORTH from Spanish America, great host
shall make Babel of the Palace Hotel, whose
builders have not been confounded Its white
towering walls, dotted with the gilded iron
bolts that bind the great rods of the building
together, shall be familiar to strange eyes
from far lands The sick Down Easter shall
abandon his nutmegs of wood and satisfy his
soul with the grapes and oranges Of our State;
yellow aristocrats from Siam and tawny revo-
iudonists from Bogota shall join hands and
pass the syrup over the steamiDg triumphs Of
Muffin Tom.
We have seven big world wonders now ::
the Bay of San Francisco, the Central Pacific
Railroad, the Big Trees, the Bonanza Yose-
mite, the Geysers, the Palace Hotel-and AS
SCISSOR Rosener.-Ouerland Monthly.
The Original MarJ's Little Lamb.
A writer in the Springfield Republican has
had a pleasant interview With the real Mary
who had little lamb and who related to him