In case you missed it last week, I bought some 100 year old postcards of old Philadelphia landmarks and decided to do research on the buildings on the front of them. There is some very cool stuff here.
This is the best one. The history of the Divine Lorraine.
Due to numerous cancellations with the Phillies, holidays, etc, it has been hard to build enough consistency to really pull off a power rankings. We seem to finally be moving forward enough to get some rankings up (which will of course be derailed by the Christmas holiday, but such is life.) Here are our top ten heading into this week.
What playwrights daring Broadway show, Race, just opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre?
One of the classiest hotels in Philadelphia at the turn of the 20th century was the brand new Hotel Walton. For a little background, we go to one of our favorite blogs, the one at Phillyhistory.org: The Hotel Walton, located on the southeast corner of Broad Street and Locust Street, opened in February 1896 and incorporated the Hotel Metropole, an earlier establishment on the same site. Upon its completion, the hotel featured a ladies’ restaurant, a gentlemen’s café, several parlors, a banquet hall, and 400 guest rooms (200 of which had separate baths). The hotel would eventually be known as the John Bartram Hotel before being demolished in the 1960s.
I stumbled onto a treasure trove of info about the Hotel here. Clumsy to maneuver, it is a paper written by the National Park Service on a typewriter many years ago and later uploaded onto the Web. Major thanks to whoever scanned it in.
The architect of the Hotel Walton was Angus Wade, who also designed the Hotel Hanover, the Bingham Hotel, and the Hotel Rittenhouse, all spectacular structures that no longer stand (The Hotel Rittenhouse is not the Rittenhouse Hotel, but rather a hotel that was at 21st and Chestnut.) Poor Angus. He did perhaps also design the still standing Carriage House, now a B&B near Penn on 46th Street, though there are no good photos of it on their website.
Am I rambling on about a guy named Angus? Where was I? Ah yes, the Hotel Walton. There was a hotel called the Hotel Metropole at that address but the Hotel Walton incorporated it as part of the much larger Hotel Walton. It opened in February of 1896, and the paper includes the coolest thing I’ve found yet while researching these hotels: a Public Ledger article about the opening written on February 13, 1896. Here is the opening to the story, and a full description of the hotel is offered after the jump:
“Thousands of People thronged the new Hotel Walton from roof to basement last evening, on the occasion of its formal opening, when a scene of brilliancy was presented which has seldom been equalled in this city. The event served a two-fold purpose, as it not only showed off the magnificence of this new hostelry, but gave an opportunity for the gentler sex to display their new midwinter gowns.”
How did it get the name Walton? That info comes to us in the next article in the typewritten paper, which is actually from a year earlier:
Robert Goulet was the original owner?!! Oh wait, nevermind, it’s Goelet, not Goulet. My bad. Anyways, I bet his son was an insuffereable, obnoxious punk about having that Hotel named after him. When he was in his early 20s, I bet he constantly bragged to women that he was the namesake of the Hotel Walton, but I bet the women blew him off anyway, because he was so annoying about it. I bet our boy Angus couldn’t stand the little punk, but kept up appearances when he came around, just so Robert Goulet Goelet wouldn’t get mad.
In 1946, the Hotel Walton went into bankruptcy. I suspect the spoiled rotten little brat who the hotel was named after spent all of the money on fast cars and easy women, but I am completely making that up and not basing it on any “facts” or “research”. Nonetheless, it went into bankruptcy in 1946 and reopened as the John Bartram Hotel in 1946. It was torn down in 1966. Ok, for a real treat, after the jump I’ll tell you where to find a bunch of pictures of the Hotel, what the postcards said, and post the entire 1896 description of the Hotel when it opened.
Not only a day of infamy, but a day of supreme failure by the US, as the American military was caught completely flat footed, thinking that if the Japanese attacked, it would be on the Phillipines, not on Pearl Harbor. As with most major events in US history, there are plenty of conspiracy theorists. In this case, the conspiracists think that FDR was well aware of the impending attack, but did nothing about it. But there is another Roosevelt family connection to the attack. There was a very interesting piece in yesterday’s NY Times about how Teddy Roosevelt’s dealings with the Japanese in 1905 played a part in why we were attacked 36 years later.
RELATED: An eyewitness account from a man aboard the USS Arizona.
1st Place: Molera Clan
2nd Place: Nassawoodstock 2
Last Place: HOVA (with their prize: a JC Chasez marionette)
Hey kids, just a heads up that we have a very cool contest going on over at iSportacus. We have teamed up with Phillyfaithful.com to give a sweet new AI t-shirt to the winner of our Allen Iverson haiku contest. To get in on the contest, click here and post your haiku in the comments section, and may the best haiku win.
First Place: Quiz on Your Face 104
2nd Place: The Jams (repped by Jewelz) 93
3rd Place: 1022 93
First Place: Ivan the Trivial 112
2nd Place: The Savage Ear 107
3rd Place: Hummus is Not a Condiment 99
There is plenty of documentation on the old Bellevue-Stratford (above, in postcard I just bought), now known as Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue. According to Bellevuephiladelphia.com: The Bellevue-Stratford opened its doors in 1904 and became known worldwide as Philadelphia’s pre-eminent hotel, nicknamed “The Grande Dame of Broad Street.” Famed hotelier George C. Boldt (he also managed the Waldorf-Astoria in New York) wanted to build the best hotel of its time—and he did.
The price tag on the hotel was $8,000,000 (1904 dollars) which means that technically Samuel Dalembert is worth more than the Bellevue. The postcard I have is postmarked 1909, so the person who was staying there (Harry) was there when the place was just 5 years old. It has long been considered one of the premiere hotels in Philadelphia, if not the premiere hotel.
Famous guests include Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, William Jennings Bryan, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, and the Vanderbilt family in addition to countless socialites, luminaries and heads of state. Every US President since Theodore Roosevelt has visited The Bellevue.
Here’s more cool info on the early history of the Bellevue-Stratford: With a price tag of $8 million (real money in those days), the new hotel had more than 1,000 rooms and a staff of 800, including women “whose only duty is to act as trunk packers for the women guests, and who are skilled in putting away expensive dresses without mussing them.”
The hotel also included an elegant ballroom that boasted a moveable stage, lighting fixtures designed by Thomas Edison and a spectacular grand staircase. It quickly became the place for society events. Eleanor Dorrance’s debutante ball in 1926 is still legendary. Daddy Dorrance, president of the Campbell Soup Company, shelled out $100,000, including the cost for two orchestras so the music could continue uninterrupted. (One, led by Paul Whiteman, featured Bix Biederbecke on cornet and Bing Crosby as one of the vocalists.)
And you thought the spoiled rotten brats on My Super Sweet 16 were a new development. Of course, the Bellevue is also well known in Philadelphia for the Legionnaires tragedy of 1976. The hotel briefly closed, but was soon reopened. Business was slow in the 80s, and it closed again in 1986. It reopened in 1989. It was bought by Hyatt in 1996, and they have been running it ever since. It looks now much the same as it did 100 years ago. There is much more history to be covered on the Bellevue, but I gotta get to working on questions, so I’ll write some more in the next few days.
