The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1882-09-13
The New York Liquor Palace
Kept by a Murderer.

| went last night, writes the New
York correspondent Of the Hartford
Times, into Ed" Stokes famous bar.
room to see how the incandersent cleo,
trict light of the United States Company
will look in picture galleries. 1t is stu.
ated at the back of the Hoffman House.
which Stokes has leased and runs as a
hotel chiefly for politicians and the bet
ter class of sporting men. The famous
bar room is a room about 40 feet wide
and 100 feet long. An enormous carved
screen, the opening filled with stained
glass OF the most expensive kind, d.
vldes 1T into two parts lengthwise. On
both sides OF this screen, which is said
to have cost $4,000, are bars of mahog-
my, enormously lich and Soiled with an
immense deal OF brass and silver work.
At each end OF the bars are maSnificent
Sevres vases from the DemidCff palace.
sold out a year or two ago. Stokes PAL id
So, 500 TO- the four. The screen thus di-
vldcs the room into two commandments
In one of which are small mahogany ta-
bles at which men sit and drink, while
on the other side there are few tables,
much of the space being taken up i,
groupes of men admiring Bouguereau's
picture of half a dozen naked women
dragging a satyr into the water much
against his will. The canvass is a LARGE
one and the figures life-size. Stokes gave
$40, 600 for it at the recent Wolfe sale of
paintings. There is nakedDess and ma.
Kedness, as the French say, in art. and
this is scarcely the kind of nakedness
that a sensitive man wants in his draw
lng-room. 1t has paid Stokes in this
way: New Workers wanting to show
the sights of the town to stranger never
neglect to tale their friends to see this pic
pure, and once inside the bar-room the
chances are W to one that the bar reaps
some advantage. The picture is really
fine as a work of art and is an excuse
which many married men can offer at
home for finding their way so many
times into Stokes gorgeous prog-shop.
Besides this large canvass, Stokes has
collected about twenty smaller pieces.
all by trst-class artists and all more o,
less of a kind that Tony Comstock, the
censor III such matters, would look cross
eyed at. Pictures of naked women ? e
on all the walls and statues OF naked NO
men in bronze and marble adorn eve,v
corner and niche. The appointments f
this place are in keeping with it's COL
tents. The glass work, decorations. cur
tains, portieres, ~floores, ceilings chan
deliers are of the most e~stravaGaat kind
known. The room as ii stands is said to
cost 500, COO, and the estimate is prof.
ably not an exaggerated one. The bar
appointments are equally rich the glass
es are as thin as egg shells ard the IL
Quors, so | am told. are of the best quail
ity, never sold for less than a quarter a
drink that being the minimum price.
while beer is unknown III SO aristocratic
a place.
Ed Stoi es, himself, is perhaps as
much scrutinized by visitors as his pic
lures. He is almost always 10 be seen
around the corridors or office of the hotel.
seldom in the bar room. don't know
how true it is, but 1t is often said that
the owner of the finest bar room in the
world never taken a drink across his
W bar, and is never known to driuk
liquor. Some say that he made an oath
that if he escaped hanging or imprison-
ment for life after kIlling Fisk, that ne
would never drink another drop of
liquor. He is the typical sporting man,
although he never drinks or CANDLES.