LONDONS LEVIATHAN HOTEL

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 10009, 21 December 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

LONDONS LEVIATHAN HOTEL

The huge hotel, now approaching completion on tho Thames Embankment, when it is finished, may claim to bo tho largest establishment of its kind in Europe. It is in far completed that there will bo no difficulty in receiving guests in the early part of next year.

The fine river frontage has boen fully utilised, and all tho floors (nine or ten), have a splendid view of tho river, tho topmost sighting the Surrey hills. The slope of tho found;.lions makes the ground floor on the Strand side the first floor on the river side, and the woll-kept gardens of the Thames Embankment, laid out by tho London County Council, appear to belong to the hotel, and no one else. The grand staircase of tho hotel, springing from tho river basement and running up the centre of the building, is almost, a palace in itself. Tho hotel is provided with many magnificent halls, those in tho basement) communicating with the river garden, and those on tho higher Hours with long and broad stone terraces overlooking the public. Hero hundred" of people can sit sipping their coffee while they gaze at that marvellous semi-circle of river, bridge-.*, churches, houses, railways, boats, barges, legislative palaces, and London generally. On the Strand side of the hotel is a long and broad courtyard, already decorated with plants and basins for fountains, and on each sido of this opon space nro two long blocks of buildings arranged as part of the hotel, called the cast wing and tho west wing. The hotel belongs to the United Realisation Company, whic'i took over the property from the Oflicial Receiver of the Liberator Company, and completed the great design. In a few years the origin of tho scheme will be forgotten, and in the new Cecil Hotel (as it is proposed to call it) wo shall congratulate ourselves on tho possession of a groat architectural ornament to central London.