Such residential “palace” hotel dining rooms as that of the Lick House in San Francisco were compulsory socializing venues, and considered by the residents to be superior to the hassle of keeping servants. For private entertaining, of course one would order dinner catered by room service.

An enormouse staff kept the hotel running behind the scenes, as in this 1905 view of a hotel kitchen.

Perhaps the most famous “palace” hotel, the large and elaborately appointed suites at the Plaza Hotel (1907) were home to families who were the closest  New York had to royalty.

The Sovereign Hotel, near downtown Santa Monica in a residential neighborhood,was built for long-term residence for those spending the season in the beachside town.

The Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, a suburban resort and residential hotel, was out of the urban fray of San Francisco and accessible by car or local rail.

Living Downtown, The History of Residential Hotels in the United States

By Paul Groth

This important and fascinating book tells the story of a near-extinct mode of urban housing, one which as late as the 1970s and 1980s housed a significant number of urban dwellers from all segments of society. In urban areas today we clearly have a definition of "hotel" which is only a small part of the historic picture, as it once included temporary and permanent housing for all segments of society in which people, for varying reasons, could not or did not want to set up housekeeping. The lives of many types of people from dockworkers to Supreme Court justices at times demanded mobility and lack of material encumbrance. Hotel living enabled people to keep up whatever life they could afford, answer their social needs, and become a part of a built-in community. The divisions between different types of hotel housing, from the elaborate "palace" hotels for a very rarified segment of society to the canvas-cot flophouses for itinerant laborers, are vividly described in this book.

The irony of calling rented housing a "palace" will not be lost on the reader; but the designation is apt. The palace hotels were meant to anticipate every need of their inhabitants who, as if tended to by silent servants, would have their rooms cleaned, their bedding changed, elaborate meals awaiting them in the dining room, and any social arrangements made for them. They were able to entertain impressively in the hotel's enormous and elaborate public spaces. This "palace" atmosphere, available to a great body of people who simply had the cash to live there, was considered a great manifestation of democracy.

The middle-class and upper middle-class hotels in American cities had many of the features of the palace hotels, but on a much more modest scale. The dining rooms were elegant but less elaborate, and the level of service was less solicitous. But these were very respectable places to live, and were most often occupied by families and professionals who may have been located in a city temporarily or until a house was built for them, or who simply preferred that mode of living.

The lower ranks were rooming houses, so often featured in American film noir complete with flashing neon and grimy doorjambs, and cheap lodging houses and flop houses. The occupants of the first category, semi-respectable (but meager) rooming houses, could have boarded with a family in many cases, but they may have preferred the independence (perhaps the anonymity) and convenience of a hotel. In the latter two categories, the conditions were not only unpleasant, but could be quite dangerous. There was little supervision and security; owners would provide as few toilet facilities and heating elements as they could get away with, and ventilation was minimal. Groth's point, however, is that these facilities really did answer a need in society - without Single Room Occupancy hotels of the laboring class districts of cities (now simply known as "skid row," as the author notes), where were these often-migrant workers to live? Groth implies, and sometimes states, that the only choice was to live on the street, something not nearly so common (as it is today) when SROs were widely available in the neighborhoods where such workers were an essential part of the machinery of society.

This study is written with an understanding that housing is more than just a building and the patterns of use within it. The location of rooming house districts within the city (San Francisco is Groth's best example) is explained, and the other businesses upon which hotel residents also depend are understood as a part of those people's homes.
For example, a person with no kitchen, laundry facilities, or
entertainment within his living quarters must go out into the
neighborhood to find those services. These are the components of "home" which are scattered up and down one's street in Groth's description. The opposite effect was also present in first-class "palace" hotels. These buildings contained dining rooms which obviated the need for both kitchens and outside restaurants; laundry was done for the residents within the building's facilities; and social events were always taking place within the common entertaining spaces.

Groth also explores the political and social forces which sought to destroy all levels of hotel culture. The Progressive movement of the early twentieth century was already taking its swings at hotel life at that early date, attacking the torpid and luxuriating residents of the palace hotels and the filthy and dangerous habits of those who moved from rooming house to rooming house and city to city between jobs. Hotel life was seen to contribute to alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity, and lack of civic involvement and interest. Other societal ills were blamed on the lack of responsibility taken by those who rented and did not set up their own homes (in the late 19th century, decorating and maintaining the family home was a very high calling for a woman, and was posited as one of society's major civilizing forces). Hotel residents were blamed with somehow not participating in mainstream society. In addition, the bias toward the production and occupation of single family homes in the U.S. (which has dominated almost all American planning and land use philosophy since before World War II) certainly had an effect on the movements against hotels (and perhaps vice versa).

Living Downtown is meant to serve as a call for choices in urban
housing, which have been removed from American life in favor of one dominant model. Groth describes the practices of slum lords without really passing explicit judgement against them, despite the large numbers of people who they were both endangering and making sometimes enormous profits off of. Also touched on but not fully explored is the apparent contradiction between the very handsome and respectable facades of many of the buildings, while the standards of the hotels they were built to house were quite low from the start. Groth seems to explain this as a function of the developers' attempts to keep their standing in the community by contributing a nice-looking building to the
streetscape, despite its use. Perhaps this contradiction will strike
anyone who lives (as we do) in a society where the design quality of a building seems to have been nearly forgotten as a tool to draw attention and create a particular perception of a building and its owner or occupant.

The style of the text is engaging and clear. Many historic and
contemporary photographs illustrate the book, as well as diagrams of floor plans and neighborhood uses and densities. Equal parts social, economic, political, and architectural history, Living Downtown is full of surprises and insight for anyone with an interest in urban history.

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