Grand Hotel

Abstract

Hotels were not new, but the later nineteenth century witnessed a major innovation which shaped the West End: the Grand Hotel. This was part of a global trend with hotels becoming ever larger; monumental landmarks in the urban scene. The chapter decodes the pleasures and significance of the hotel and explores why such elite institutions entered the cultural imagination. It looks in particular at the figures of Richard D’Oyly Carte who built the Ritz, and at César Ritz who then ran it. The hotel aimed to emulate the domestic and provide a home from home. Yet the atmosphere was really a transformation of the domestic. It also reflected the influence of American and Parisian hotels. The Strand and Trafalgar Square were characterized by a profusion of hotels, the product of London’s role as a world city. This chapter explores the domestic interior of the hotel and analyses its different functions