CALIFORNIAN HOTELS.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 107, 19 April 1876, Page 3

CALIFORNIAN HOTELS.

A ueckn't traveller by the American route adds the following to tlie information on the subject of Ban Francisco hotels The hotels are a groat institution. Tin; Occidental, at which we put up, has 420 rooms, 13 billiard tables, post-office telegraph-office, (rendered doubly attractive by the presence of a female operator), barber’s saloon, tobacconist’s shop, and other appurtenances, making up a small township in itself. There are five flats in the house, and when one wants to go up to one’s room, one steps into an elaborately upholstered elevator—- “ Where for sir?” “320;” and up one goes like a streak of greased lightning through a gooseberry bush—it’s awfully jolly ! Numbers of private families live in these hotels, not always from choice, however, but in many cases as a matter of economy, the high prices of commodities. house rents, and servants rendering housekeeping a serious undertaking. The effect of this is of course utterly to destroy all that sentiment which goes to make up the unity and social attractions of an English home. It necessarily induces indolence in women folk, and wc all know that when they have nothing to do they get into mischief, and study deeply the science of dressing and undressing, their success in the former being on exhibition each afternoon in KeaVhey-strect. In our hotel wo could get meals at any hour, from six in the morning till twelve at night, and it was as well we could, for if a man desired to have his breakfast finished by nine o’clock he would recpiire to commence at six. I can back the San Francisco waiter against the world for unapproachable laziness. In America the biggest of everything is generally considered the best, and San Francisco is trying to make itself the best city in America; it has, of course, the biggest hotel in the world. This structure is called the Palace Hotel, and a few particulars about it may not bo uninteresting. It is built on a whole block, surrounding a quadrangular court, into which open balconies twelve feet wide, and has a frontage to four streets —350 to Moiit-gomery-street an'd 255 to Market-street; it covers 96,250 square feet of land ; it has tiers of storeys reaching to the height of 115' feet; contains' about J ,-200' rooms; there afe 848 bay windows, and 377 bath rooms in the house f every room is ventilated- with a separate flue running

to tlio roof; it lias four arti’sinu wells; over lour miles of hose, avid the building' ciau be drenched from roof to cellar in ten minutes ; there are five elevators, each of which can raise 100 passengers from the ground floor to the seventh storey in one minute. The building itself is estimated to cost £00,000; It has not a very pretentions appearance, but go where oiie will in Han Francisco the Palace Hotel is always in sight.