THE BILTMORE NEW YORK • Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library go* BILTMORE NEW YORK JOHN McE. BOWMAN President VANDERBILT & MADISON AVENUES 43 R - D & 44 T -» STREETS THE BILTMORE A LITTLE JOURNEY TO THE BILTMORE By ELBERT HUBBARD 'VE BEEN to a hotel. I thought I had seen hotels before, but now I know I hadn't. The Biltmore in New York City, is a hotel that is individual, distinct, peculiar, unique and unforgetable. The Biltmore tokens a new time. The opening of this hotel is an epoch. We are living in a new age, and if you want to realize this just visit this wonderful hostelry. If you arrive from New England or upon the New York Central lines, the ease with which you can go to The Biltmore will be the first thing that gives you a thrill of delight. You eliminate cab drivers, taxis, guides, and cross no streets, run into no congestions of traffic. When you alight from your train at the Grand Central Station, you hand your bag to a Red Cap and say, "The Biltmore." In about half a second you are deposited in a luxurious elevator, and in half a second more you are in the office of The Biltmore. If you come to New York by other routes than those named, the location of The Biltmore is so central that you are but a few moments from station or ferry. The Biltmore is so arranged that there is no congestion or crowd- ing in any of the hallways, elevators, restaurant, palm court, grill rooms, cafes or buffets. Here is revealed the genius of the architects, Warren & Wetmore, who have designed many of the structural wonders of New York, and they have fairly surpassed themselves in The Biltmore. I was told that there were in the hotel when I was there over three thousand people, but I ran into no crowd. r PHE main office * of The Biltmore is conveniently lo- cated, and equipped with every conven- ience to meet quick- ly each requirement of the guest. grill room and peace-impelling lounge are all outside rooms, where the light from the out-of-doors enters, and this is true of every one of the thousand rooms in the house. Electricity has never been used so thoroughly as it has in this building, so I am told by one of the great engineers of the world. We speak of a building being wired for electric lights, but here is the only building in the world that is completely wired for service. There are pneumatic tubes that carry laundry bundles and a vacuum cleaning service that picks up the dust and carries it out. Every known device for ventilation has been installed by which dust is kept out of the hotel, and a scientist of note tells me that the atmosphere in The Biltmore would show a far greater purity from the microbes of dust and bacteria of disintegration than outside air, even in the country, unless it were immediately after a great fall of snow. Thus it really looks as if when we want to get absolutely sanitary conditions in future, we will have to go to the city and not to the country. The Biltmore is the last word in hotel creation. It is the last white milestone on the road to progress. It contains every better- ment, every improvement, every device for comfort and convenience that any and all the best hotels of America or Europe have, and none of their disadvantages, and it has so many advantages of its own. In the building of The Biltmore we find the combined genius of the greatest men of the age collaborating, and the net result is a home for the traveler that is the safest, sanest, most complete, convenient and luxurious institution ever thought out by human brains, and constructed with human hands. In its furnishings and decorations it is pleasing to the most highly sensitive and cultivated taste, for all of these things were designed by the master minds in such work, Messrs. W. & J. Sloane, of New York. All of the water used for bathing purposes is soft water, the water being nitrated by the Permutit system, a wonderful device evolved by German brains. By this system all of the mineral salts that HE corridors on the main floor are beautified by rare tapestries, graceful palms, marble pan- eled side walls and richly upholstered and handsomely carved furniture. may be in the water are removed, and nothing is added, so we have rain water just as you would catch it in the clouds. The Biltmore is the first hotel in America to adopt this soft-water system. There are twenty-six stories in The Biltmore Hotel, hut there is really no choice in the rooms, so far as altitude is concerned. There are a thousand bedrooms and nine hundred and fifty private baths. No wall-paper of any sort is used. All baseboards are marble, and the elevator shafts are solid stone. There is a Louis XIV ball and banquet room on the nineteenth floor, seating six hundred people, surrounded with a royal suite of reception and supper rooms. This ballroom, with its gallery is a salon befitting a royal palace. In addition to this, there is a smaller banquet and music room on the fourth floor, which would dazzle the eyes of any one unaccustomed to luxurious establishments. The construction of the exterior of the building is such as to permit on the sixth floor a large pergola and out-of-door garden, with walks, flower beds and ornamental shrubs — an ideal spot for summer afternoon teas, amid floral surroundings and far above the strident noises of the city. This, like the banquet hall, is supplied with an independ- ent kitchen — and speaking of kitchens, please note that every one of these indispensable adjuncts to a hotel is above ground in The Biltmore, and not placed in illy- ventilated cellars, as in most hotels. Nerve irritation is reduced to the minimum at The Biltmore. If you like music at your meals you can go to a dining-room where a Polish professor produces sweet symphonies. If you prefer to eat in silence, you are accommodated. Some philosopher has said that there is a vast difference between eating dinner and dining. So there is. You dine at The Biltmore. The china is unlike the usual hotel ware and more like that which you find on a private table of refinement. The napery and the Gorham silverware, chaste in design and pattern, added to the attention of trained waiters, all tend to enhance your enjoyment of the food, which has been pre- pared by chefs known on both sides of the Atlantic. The whole building is a place of rest, quiet as the country, beautiful as the Little Trianon at Versailles. Turkish baths, a huge swimming pool, gymnasiums, music rooms, ballrooms, banquet rooms, a dozen 'T^HE large Res- taurant is en- tered through the stately Palm Court which offers invit- ing opportunity for after-dinner coffee and cigars and social intercourse. private dining rooms — here are accommodations that cater to every exigency and condition of life. Just to show how complete this place is, there is a hospital with an operating room, as perfect as science and invention can make it, to take care of emergency cases. Doctors and nurses are here, people of skill to look after the wants of the guests that may need aid. The average guest would never know anything about this hospital. You only find it when you require it or search it out. And then there is something more, because a hotel is more than a mass of stone and concrete and a tangle of pipes and wires, and rooms, and dishes, and pictures, and statuary; yes, there is something else, that is the element of human service. We have been told that corporations have no souls, but a thing that hasn't a soul is dead. At The Bilt- more there is a healthful, friendly atmosphere, a gentleness, a kind- ness, a courtesy and a high intelligence that never obtrudes, but which is always right there when you need it. And this friendliness and devotion to human needs is a quality that you cannot omit. The Biltmore, like paradise, is a condition of mind. Also, it is an environment. Some people may imagine that the prices at The Biltmore are of a kind that can only be met by royalty. This is a mistake; the prices — why, they are just what you have been paying elsewhere, when you flattered yourself you were putting up first class. Any one who does not know The Biltmore Hotel is lagging behind in life's procession. It is a part of the education of every man and woman to know what the big men of the world are doing, and what civilization is supplying. Only thus are we able to know in what direction we are traveling and how fast we are moving. And so my advice to every citizen of America, or of Europe as well, is, when you are in New York, do not fail to see The Biltmore Hotel. It is a place of safety, sanity, sanitation, health and luxury, where use and beauty blend, and the ideal place for temporary or permanent abode. Here courtesy, kindness, friendship and goodwill smile you a welcome. You will be glad when you arrive at The Biltmore; you will be sorry when you have to go; and you will look forward with fond anticipa- tion to a return visit. '"PHE Cascades— a transforma- tion of the grand ballroom on the nineteenth floor into a summer res- taurant of unique and striking beauty in which dinner is followed by dancing. r T* H E children's play - room, a place of unalloyed joy and innumerable fascinating toys which is an ever- welcome resource on rainy days or in time between outings. '"PHE Louis XIV Ballroom and Banquet Hall, with its liberal propor- tions, its gilded walls and exquisite drap- eries, forms a royal setting for social gatherings. T^HE Music Room on the fourth floor is admirably arranged with its connecting recep- tion and supper rooms for private functions and thes dansants. THERE are several private dining rooms in The Biltmore suitable for informal dinners, or dinner dances. Each has full kitchen and serviceconveniences. TpOR the leisure hours — between appointments — or while waiting for one's friends — no more delightful rest- ing place can be im- agined than The Biltmore Lounge. Here quiet and comfort are happily combined. r Y* HE private suites in The Biltmore are particularly well adapted for those who wish to make in the hotel their per- manent homes free from the burden of housekeeping. A tete-a-tete amid the dainty sur- roundings of The Biltmore tea-room is indeed a pleasure unalloyed. "Tea at The Bilt- more" is nothing less than an institu- tion for the di s- criminating. T^HE Gentlemen's Writing Room is a very business- like place with everything that goes to make a good letter at hand — and it's a very com- fortable one too. rRAN-. PRE SBRE Y CO.. NEW YORK