0 
 
SEYMOUR DURST 
 
 When you leave, please leave this book 
 
 Because it has been said 
 " Ever' tbinQ comes t' him who waits 
 
 Except a loaned book." 
 
 Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
THE RITZ IDEA 
 
 The Story of a Great Hotel 
 
THE 
 
 RITZ IDEA 
 
 The Story of 
 a Great Hotel 
 
 by 
 
 LUCIUS BEEBE 
 
 Privately Printed 
 ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED THIRTY SIX 
 
Copyright 1936 
 by 
 
 RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL CORPORATION 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
T 1 
 
 HERE lived until recently a very great American lady whose pride 
 it was that, although she was a world traveller of no small distinction and 
 followed the seasons through the capitals and spas, watering places, win- 
 ter resorts and mountain retreats of the Continent and her own country, 
 she never went to bed save under her own roof. She maintained a stately 
 town house on Madison Avenue in New York, a magnificent West End 
 residence in London, villas at Cannes and Naples, a schloss in the Austrian 
 Tyrol, an Ocean Boulevard establishment designed for her by Addison 
 Mizner with a cool patio and gay cabanas at Palm Beach, a suburban 
 
 estate in Westchester, a fishing camp with rights to 
 one of the finest stretches of the Restigouche, and a 
 Spanish hacienda at Santa Barbara. Her private car 
 
 TO TMt 
 
 TRAINS 
 
 and ocean-going yacht took her where she pleased 
 
and wherever she found herself she was at home. • * • Guided by a 
 similarly discerning attitude toward the details of existence, there has 
 come into being a more inclusive but none the less fastidious group of 
 amateurs of fine living whose progress through the world is largely cen- 
 tered around its Ritz cities. They are known to the footmen on duty out- 
 side the restaurant of the Paris Ritz at the traditional formality of Sunday 
 night dinner. In New York, Charles, the matire <T hotel, has earmarked for 
 them the first grouse of the season, rushed from the Scotch moors in 
 hampers and ferried across the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary. When 
 they stop over in Boston on the way to Seal Harbor or for the Harvard- 
 Yale game in November they take their "old fashioneds" in one of the 
 handsomest of all Ritz bars facing on Arlington Street and the Public 
 Garden. * * * To them the Ritz hotels are a universally recognized 
 hallmark of a distinguished way of life. * * * The Ritz tradition came 
 
into being through the agency of a Swiss youth who foresaw the possibili- 
 ties of public entertainment in a manner until a century ago reserved only 
 
 man with a background in a race productive of so many of the great tav- 
 erners of history, Cesar Ritz in the middle of the nineteenth century essayed 
 the traditional cursus honorum of the Continental restaurateur, starting 
 
 as a kitchen helper in Paris, serving as apprentice under one of the rank 
 
 ing maitres of his time, Brassac of the Voisin, and, in time, achieving the 
 rank of restaurant manager in Monte Carlo's extravagantly ormolu and 
 cloisonne Grand Hotel. * * * Cannes, Lucerne, Baden Baden, Rome, 
 
 for the private palaces and chateaux of Europe. Born the son of a hotel 
 
 the resorts of a now vanished world of fashion and 
 
 the watering places that knew the old, bearded kings 
 
 that was to bring Cesar Ritz, in the opulent noontide 
 
 of Europe, all were milestones along the highroad 
 
of the Victorian nineties, to London as manager of the Savoy Hotel. Then, 
 it was said that "the best chefs in France are in the kitchens of London," 
 
 and, in a midst where Galsworthy's Forsytes were realizing a dream of 
 British world-supremacy, Cesar Ritz was able to establish his own con- 
 
 tribution to the tradition of hotel service: absolute deference to the indi- 
 
 vidual tastes of the most exacting patrons. Not only, however, were guests 
 
 accorded every princely consideration of service. Cesar Ritz foresaw an 
 
 era in hotel management when such material considerations as a suffi- 
 ciency of bath rooms, expeditious floor service and many other modern 
 facilities would be taken for granted, and he was the first to introduce 
 them into his European establishments. * * * And in the almost 
 overnight success of the Savoy, as in Cesar Ritz's other triumphs, his 
 partner was Auguste Escoffier who, within a single lifetime, revitalized the 
 entire existing tradition of French gastronomy. For he preached that 
 
simplicity was the ultimate grace in cultivated dining and that, for all its 
 turtle soup and Southdown mutton and hogsheads of claret, the indis- 
 criminate profusion of a Lord Mayor's banquet was a poor second to the 
 distinguished service of a few perfect and harmonious dishes. * * • 
 From the Savoy Cesar Ritz crossed the Channel to establish on the Place 
 Vendome in Paris the first of the hotels to bear his name and there, as in 
 
 the Strand, he contrived for the first time in history to convince the aris- 
 tocracy of France that public dining was not only suitable for the titled 
 great of the world and for the over-lords of its finances, but almost a social 
 requirement. Formal Sunday night dining at the Ritz became a glittering 
 European tradition, and its corridors and lounges 
 were flooded with tiderips of princes, grand dukes 
 and court chamberlains on the services of royal mas- 
 
 ters. From then until now the various Ritz hotels 
 
have been the established resorts of royal and imperial personages who 
 discovered in them a uniformity of service which was as dependable away 
 from home as that in their own villas and palaces. And when he returned 
 to London, at the summons of a group of British entrepreneurs, to estab- 
 lish there the Carlton and Ritz hotels, Cesar Ritz was accustomed to a 
 
 clientele of titled grandeur. * • • New York's Ritz-Carlton had its 
 
 origin when, in 1907, Charles Wetmore, the architect, and Robert W. 
 
 Goelet, a nephew of Wetmore's partner, Whitney Warren, and a consider- 
 able proprietor of Manhattan real estate, interested themselves in organ- 
 izing in America a hotel whose management and operation should be 
 under the direction of the Ritz Hotels Development Company of England. 
 The site selected was one of Mr. Goelet's properties at the corner of 
 Madison Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. When the hotel was begun, Madi- 
 
 son Avenue in the Forties was a suburban wasteland flanked by the unquiet 
 
reaches of the New York Central's train yards and switch points leading 
 to the old Forty-second Street terminal. A block away, Fifth Avenue was 
 still very much of a residential street, and the terraces and penthouses of 
 Park Avenue were still in the unimagined future. * * * Three years 
 later, when Albert Keller ushered his first guests to their suites while 
 Escoffier, from his kitchen fastness below, proudly supervised the service 
 of the first meals, three questions which had confronted the entrepreneurs 
 of the Ritz project were answered. Would New York, they had asked them- 
 selves, accustomed to established and characteristically American hotel 
 
 management, respond to the Ritz idea of refinements of living hitherto 
 
 and Forty-sixth Street to lunch and dine away from 
 
 nating New Yorkers venture over to Madison Avenue 
 
 tion that it would. Would substantial and discrimi- 
 
 known only to Europe? It was Mr. Goelet's convic' 
 
the accepted region of Fifth Avenue where land values were five times as 
 
 high? Mr. Goelet thought so and was willing to back his judgment. Even 
 
 if they were willing to patronize a restaurant in this part of town, would 
 
 patrons be willing to take up residence away from the hotel district to 
 
 the south and west? Mr. Goelet felt that the focal center of social Man- 
 
 hattan was drifting inevitably north and east. Within the first year of its 
 
 operation the Ritz entirely justified his decision. * * * Throughout 
 
 the latter years of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth cen- 
 
 tury American hotels subscribed to a tradition of florid and rococo 
 
 magnificence. Boston's Tremont House, the earliest first class hostelry in 
 the United States, had given way in baroque succes- 
 sion to the Revere House and, later, Parker's in 
 School Street. Elsewhere notable landmarks flour- 
 ished, awash with Turkey carpets, floriated bronze 
 
electroliers and handsome brass cuspidors: the St. Charles in New 
 Orleans, the Planters above the river in St. Louis, Brown's Palace in 
 Denver and the Palmer House in Chicago with its barbershop floor liter- 
 ally paved with silver dollars. In downtown New York the wonders of the 
 Astor House and the Brevoort, where Cunard captains assured visiting 
 Englishmen they would be safe from the Indians who were accustomed 
 to roam Broadway, had given way to Peacock Alley and the damask 
 upholstered glories of the old Waldorf. The Ritz-Carlton had just two 
 things to offer: * * * Continental dining of an exquisite perfection 
 never dreamed of in America, and a classic restraint in appointments 
 and service beyond anything yet conceived in the realm of public hospi- 
 tality. And these immediate tangible assets were destined to bring into 
 being a third, less tangible but even more precious : the patronage of the 
 most urbane and distinguished clientele ever attracted to any hotel on this 
 
side of the Atlantic. • * * Mr. Keller had been brought up in the same 
 tradition as Cesar Ritz himself and had served under him both in Rome 
 
 and at the Savoy. Experience had shown that if he secured the proper 
 patronage from the outset, the hotel's success was assured, and, through 
 his many connections in the world's capitals, he set about enlisting diplo- 
 mats, publishers, celebrated authors, industrialists and others whose 
 names made news as Ritz figures. Lord Dewar, Marquis of Aberdeen and 
 Governor of Ireland, gave a magnificent dinner for a hand picked group 
 
its miracles of service and the largest hanging ceiling ever incorporated in 
 the architecture of a hotel. * * * Charles Schwab, a table amateur of 
 fine perceptions, heralded the fame of EscofBer the length and breadth of 
 the land. Alfredo Tornquist, the Argentine banker, was among the first to 
 maintain a permanent suite for his convenience when in the United States. 
 It was at the Ritz that the Queen of Roumania was formally welcomed to 
 New York society by a great dinner and ball. Frank Munsey, Edward F. 
 Hutton, James Donahue and James Moffat entertained splendidly. Albert 
 Gallatin, in 1911, gave a dinner for the American polo team which made 
 history in a town accustomed to glittering entertainment on a large scale. 
 Clarence Mackay, Sir Thomas Lipton and Colonel Matt Wynn intrusted 
 entertainment to the banquet department and found their dinners and 
 suppers incorporated in the New York legend of gilt-edge hospitality. 
 * * * A year or two later other chapters were added by the Ritz to 
 
hotel history. Despite a barrage of infuriated protest from Arthur Bris- 
 bane in his editorial columns, women were permitted the established 
 Continental convenience of smoking in the main restaurant without 
 having to seek the privacy of retiring rooms. At the same time the popu- 
 
 larity of public dancing reached an all-time high in New York, and the 
 Crystal Room with its tented ceiling and glittering chandeliers was opened 
 for dancing between the courses of dinner and supper. Conservative as it 
 
 was in general tone and atmosphere, the Ritz contrived to keep abreast of 
 the times when good sense and manners dictated innovation. • * * 
 
 Today, as the Crystal Gardens, it has been completely 
 
 renovated, maintaining, however, its distinguished 
 
 n 
 
 identity, and air-conditioned. * * * 
 
 In the Oval Room the continental 
 
 custom of a formal Sunday evening 
 
dinner is to be introduced as the background for dignified musical enter- 
 tainment and other divertissements. The Oak Room, too, long the province 
 of John, has been air-conditioned and its panelled walls, for some years 
 painted over, restored to their original subdued charm. * * * An 
 
 interesting side-light on the prestige deriving from membership in the 
 Ritz-Carlton organization is the frequency with which the phrase "for- 
 merly of the Ritz" is appended to the names of restaurateurs, hair-dressers 
 and hotel executives now in business elsewhere. From waiter to house 
 
 manager, any Ritz employee is assured of advantageous employment, so 
 widespread is the respect in which the management is held as a training 
 school for hoteliers. * * * In its private apartments it was the object 
 of the hotel's architect that the substantial comforts of a country home, 
 where space is at no premium, should be incorporated in the necessarily 
 limited confines of an urban residence. To this end special attention was 
 
paid to the proportions of the rooms themselves, whether single apart- 
 ments or de luxe suites. The ceilings of the Ritz rooms are higher than 
 those of the modern hotel in New York, a feature which at once has the 
 
 practical advantage of assured ventilation and creates an illusion of 
 
 spacious dignity in keeping with the atmosphere of the house as a whole. 
 The decor of drawing rooms, bedroom and private dining rooms alike has 
 
 been the devising of artists and artisans concerned that Ritz living appoint 
 
 ments should parallel those of the most harmoniously furnished private 
 
 residences, and the frontispiece of this volume gives at least some sug 
 
 gestion of the simplicity and good taste characteristic 
 
 of their designs. * * * The Ritz-Carlton prides 
 
 itself in particular on the patronage it attracts from 
 
 the ranks of distinguished foreigners to New York. 
 
 This, Mr. Keller feels, is not alone due to the circum- 
 
stance that their own languages are common to all the personnel of the 
 
 hotel but more because their familiarity with the uniformity of Ritz stand- 
 
 ards abroad has convinced them that in Manhattan the same index of 
 
 service and luxury must obtain. Nothing, too, gives Mr. Keller the satis- 
 
 faction of welcoming home a strayed patron who has essayed other resi- 
 
 dences and returned to the Ritz fold. "We are willing to match any first 
 
 class hotel in our scale of prices, dollar for dollar," he says. "Our prices 
 
 are no dearer than those of other luxury hotels and for them you get also 
 
 Ritz-Carlton service which simply cannot be obtained elsewhere."* * * 
 
 Despite change and the ever-shifting allegiance of New York's formal 
 
 society, the two season restaurants of the Ritz have 
 
 maintained their supremacy as one of the dominant 
 
 rendezvous of the town. In summer the Japanese 
 
 Garden and at other seasons the Adam restaurant, 
 
presided over by the bland Charles, are once more filled to a pre- 
 depression luncheon capacity and, in a town where pre-theater dining 
 is still largely accomplished in private homes, they receive their due share 
 of attention from discriminating gourmets. * * * The repeal of na- 
 tional prohibition and the revival of de luxe dining in established 
 restaurants brought back to the Ritz an impressive portion of the town's 
 gracious entertainment. More than anything else, a generation which 
 found itself in retreat from the dubious restaurants of the twenties de- 
 
 manded the illusion of spacious surroundings, light, color and the ulti- 
 mate refinements of service. Formality in the evening, the judicious selec- 
 tion of menus and a return to the restraint and good taste of cultivated 
 dining evolved simultaneously and repeopled the bars and restaurants of 
 New York which for more than a decade had suffered from the illicit but 
 
 dominant competition of establishments where liquor was available. The 
 
winecard and cellars of the Ritz boasted vintages which demanded the 
 
 complement of fine food and its properly ordered selection. Some appre- 
 
 ciation of the precepts of Brillat-Savarin emerged from an era of whisky 
 
 and severe headaches, and the chef's requisitions again began to call for 
 
 canvasback from the rice fields of North Carolina, Strassburg pate 
 
 studded with the truffles of Perigord, the rare cheeses of the Continent and 
 
 the Maryland terrapin which have been part of the tradition of American 
 
 table fare since colonial times. Chef Louis Diat, successor to Escoffier, had 
 
 come into his own again. Eating, in a word, was supplanted by dining. 
 * * * But the most prized of all the Ritz-Carlton's heritagJsJ^hat of 
 
 the most important of New York's private entertain- 
 
 ments, dinners, banquets, balls, debutante parties and 
 
 suppers, has remained constant and subject only to 
 
 the general trends and tendencies of the times. It is 
 
conceivable that few balls may again approximate the lavish magnifi- 
 cence of the debuts of Barbara Hutton and Natalie Coe in 1929, but a Ritz- 
 
 Carlton debutante launching is still a desirable preface to a career in the 
 established circles of New York society. Some idea of the demand for 
 
 suitable dates for debutante parties may be derived from the circumstance 
 that, just as the names of candidates for admission to the Knickerbocker 
 or Union Clubs or to such preparatory schools as Groton and Saint Marks 
 are filed shortly after birth, advantageous evenings for debutante parties 
 are not infrequently reserved at the Ritz five years in advance! * * * 
 Call it a standard of quality, a household synonym for the superlative 
 excellences of living, a hallmark of distinguished taste, the name Ritz- 
 Carlton, after more than a quarter of a cycle of almost fabulous existence, 
 is an integral part of the New York legend, a glamorous fragment of 
 the life and being of the most important metropolis of the Western World. 
 
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