Consumption and efficiency in the 'city within a city': Commercial hotel architecture and the emergence of modern American culture, 1890--1930

Reinvention of the hotel building type in the early twentieth century created structures that embodied the complexities and contradictions of the emerging modern culture. This study utilizes a detailed examination of urban commercial hotels from the 1890s to 1930 to demonstrate the links between commercial architecture and cultural ideals regarding consumption, efficiency, and leisure. Influential hotels built in New York, Chicago and other cities, many operated by pioneering hotel chains such as Hotels Statler, Bowman-Biltmore, or United, indicate the urban hotel's pivotal role in promoting corporate mass consumption. The emerging consumer culture promoted the growth of hotels while the ballrooms, restaurants, and guest rooms of commercial hotels provided a significant venue for consumption and travel. The latest structural and mechanical technologies made the buildings physically possible, and in addition, modern amenities raised consumer expectations of comfort and safety. In order to create hotels catering to middle-class mass consumption, innovative hotel managers embraced an approach termed here “scientific service.” “Scientific service” represents attempts to reconcile efficient modern business methods with the tradition of personal service. Relationships between hotel managers, architects, engineers, and equipment specialists provide evidence of both the collective effort required to create the complex modern hotel and the new importance of design professionals with specialized expertise in hotels. This study also makes the case for looking at building form and aesthetics in the context of use by guests and workers. This approach moves beyond the phrase “form follows function” to view the hotel as a site of cultural negotiation involving changing gender relations, class conflict, and corporate dominance. Early twentieth century commercial hotels exhibited a corporate vision of uniform management and consumer control well before the advent of standardized franchise hotel architecture. The “city within a city” urban commercial hotel of the early twentieth century signifies both continuity with the hotel industry of today and a seminal moment in the emergence of our modern consumer culture as expressed through architecture.