The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-05-13

-. .s.-..-..........
with the exception of the top one,
wherein Alfred G. Vanderbilt lives
his almost hermit-like existence.
Lately three of the remaining five
have been let.
The extraordinary boom in house
and fiat letting consequent upon the
coming coronation is responsible for
the sudden prosperity of these flats
Had it not been that upwards of a
million prospective visitors are try
ing tC reserve residential and sleep
ing quarters in city where there IS
comfortable room for but half that
number, these flats might have re-
NAMED unoccupied for ever, or until
the owner, in disgust, tore them
down to make room for some other
more profitable form of building.
1t is not that the apartments are
unattractive to wealthy people on the
lookout for fiat. In Philadelphia or
New York they would probably have
been let before they were completed.
Each apartment is seventy feet wide
by 200 feet long, containing ten large
bedrooms, three bathrooms, drawing
rooms, billiard room, smoking room,
cloakroom and big ballroom.
For the top one-the garrett
Alfred G. Vanderbilt pays $4,000 a
year rent and further $4,000
year in rates and taxes. The apart
ments underneath him command
rents of $4,000 a year. For more
than three years the owner of the
flats has kept a full hall force OF at.
pendants in the building for the ben
eft of this scion of the house of Van
.derbilt, who has dwelt there in
lonely splendor, sleeping every night
of the week in a different bedroom.
When the weather is fine and clear,
fresh from bath in one of his three
bathrooms, or, perhaps, in all three,
he descends the elevator, mounts his
ltwo-seated carriage behind a pair Of
shining black blue ribbon winners
and makes his way down Piccadilly
and out into the country. He invar-
iably wears a flower or two in his
buttonhole and a rather selfcon-
scious smile on his thin features.
The flats are built of granite, with
trimmings of green glazed brick.
They resemble a great brick of ice
cream, vanilla and pistacho alternat-
ing. The entrance is in Hamilton
place, which runs from Piccadilly to
Park Lane, the Millionaire's Row Of
London. When Vanderbilt sits at
one of his twenty-four windows he
can flick the real gold tips of his
Turkish cigarettes on to such arIsto-
cratic roofs as those of Baron Roth
schild, Lionel Rothschild and the
Marquis of Londonderry, while
stones throw away are the town
houses of the Duke of Wellington
Lord Brassey and the late Lord
Glenesk.
I The truth would seem to be that
London has not yet been educated
up to $4,000 flats, When an Eng
lishman is thinking of putting out
/ that much money in rents he wants
a town house with a fence around It
"a sort of an Englishman's castle,
where he is supreme master OF all
: he surveys. He doesn't want to
share his halls and his elevators ana
his entrances with half a dozen other
tenants, many of whom he may not
care to know.
For the same reason, hotel life has
never become popular here, as 1t IS
jim the United States. When an Eng
Ilishman and his wife do take a fiat
lit is usually small one and the en-
tertainment of friends is done at
the fashionable hotels.
| E,ino Toh Drinfiug Of Star Office