In old times the Hudson river and other steamboat and packet ship captains, whenever they got tired of the river, used to take to keepin’ a hotel in New York. You see they liked an excitin’ public life, and havin’ had it on the water they took it on the land, just as retired actors and played-out pugilists generally take to keepin’ sportin’ houses. Old Captain Bunker, who commanded the Kentucky, the favorite passenger ship between New York and New Orleans, retired into keepin’ the Mansion House; and Captain Benson and Captain Rodgers, after running the North America and Albany steamboats on the Hudson, settled down to keepin’ the Carlton House, which in its time was the crack hotel of the metropolis, after the windin’ up of old Washington Hall.
The Carlton House was on the southeast corner of Broadway and Leonard street, and kept up to the fore by reason of its wines, which were the very best that money could buy, and it took a good deal of money to buy ‘em.
As for the Mansion House, old Captain Bunker didn’t run it so much as on its wines as on its “family” character, he bein’ a family man himself. A lot of big family or state dinners were given from time to time at this Mansion House, and one of these deserve especial remembrance from its peculiar character.
There had been a member of the numerous Coffin family of New England who had left Boston, gone to England, entered the British navy, and shown such skill and had such luck that he rose to bein’ a baronet and an admiral, and had a handle to his name, bein’ called Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin. Although he had then ceased to be an American, except by birth, and had become an Englishman in everythin’ but birth, just like thousands of Americans nowadays, he always entertained the warmest kind of admiration for America (unlike these other Americans). He always spoke well of this country, wouldn’t fight against it, and visited it several times, durin’ one of which visits he founded a school for seamen at Nantucket–the Nantucket School–an institution would still exists.
Well, the many friends and admirers of this American Englishman, durin’ one of his visits to New York, gave him a big dinner at the old Mansion House, and there was an A No. 1 time, plenty of eatin’ and drinkin’ and speechmakin’ at $5 a plate, which was big money in the olden time.
At this dinner there was the greatest exchange of international courtesies, the dinin’ room was draped with the American and British flags, the lion and the eagle were displayed together, and there was as much good will from both sides of the Atlantic as the Irving banquet.
Among other steamboat captains who took to hotel keepin’ in New York were Captain Joe Comstock, who managed the New York Hotel a while, and Captain Acker, who for a while had an interest in the St. Nicholas.
One bookseller in New York tried his hand at a hotel, and succeeded. This name was Dan Bixby (no relation of old Uncle Dan Bixby, who came after him, “the father of the blondes”). He took a place at the corner of Park place and Broadway and called it after himself “Bixby’s,” with a big drawin’ room, like the Astor’s, on the second floor, over General Hall’s music store, then the resort of female fashion.
Bein’ a Yankee by birth and a publisher by trade, Bixby knew how to extract the dollars from the public, and extracting ‘em accordin’ly, givin’, however, a fair equivalent. “Bixby’s” soon became a sort of headquarters for book men and authors (whenever the authors had money). Bixby prided himself on his “literary celebrities,” and one time gave a dinner which really beat in point of first-class literary people any author’s dinner that could be given, with all our fuss and blow, at any New York hotel today.
At this dinner there were present Fennimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bayard Taylor, N. P. Willis, George P Morris, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Fitz Green Hallock, Jackson, Fields, Cozzens, the Cary sisters and Dr. Griswold. “An author’s dinner” truly, and I guess the writers ate all the more heartily when they thought they were eatin’ at the expense of a publisher. They ate hard so as to get even!
Bixby got rich at hotel keepin’, and then went to live at the New York Hotel himself.
The New York Hotel was started by one of the old “retired” steamboat captains I spoke of about just now, Captain Joe Comstock.
It is a suggestive fact in the local history of New York that every hotel of any account started in it was always regarded as the time as bein’ too far “uptown” to make a success.
When old Astor started the Astor House, people said that there was no need for a big hotel in that portion of the city. When the St. Nicholas opened, the venture was denounced as unwarranted by location, and when the Fifth Avenue Hotel was begun it was said that Eno would have to build a New York uptown to keep it a goin’.
In the same way old Captain Comstock was assured by well-meaning friends that the New York Hotel was too far uptown to pay, and for a while it looked so. Its openin’ made a big stir, but didn’t make any big money. It was not till the Astor place riot that the New York Hotel really made a hit. At that time, bein’ the nearest hotel to the scene of the riot, the Mayor of New York went there, and other high city officials. The Seventh Regiment officers quartered there, and the establishment got a lot of free advertisin’ and a good “send-off.”
And then, Comstock givin’ the hotel up, it passed into the hands of a Frenchman called Monnet, who was one of the first to introduce first-class French cookin’ into New York. His cookin’, more than any amount of newspaper stuff, gave the New York Hotel a boom which has carried it on to this day. There is no doubt that at one time the table at the old New York Hotel was the best in America. Monnet got rich off the hotel and had a splendid country place at Throgg’s Neck, where he kept up big style and a big stable. He had set his heart on going back to his native France awhile, but just as he was startin’ on his trip he died and never saw La Belle France again.
Hiram Cranston and Hildreth then took charge. Then Cranston retired and Hildreth took charge. Then Hildreth retired and Brockway and Kerley took charge, and at last they all retired and the Cranston’s, uncle and nephew, took hold and have had charge ever since.
Old Hiram Cranston was, like Col. Stetson of the old Astor, a hotel keeper and gentleman of the old school, treating his patrons more as his guests than merely his customers. He held a regular state, full-dress dinner every day at six o’clock, where he presided as host with mingled grace and dignity. He kept up the reputation of the hotel for good cookin’, and made it very popular with visitors from the South. Before long, the New York Hotel became the favorite resort for “the Southerners” and has remained so ever since. Before the war, “the South kept Cranston,” but durin’ the war Cranston returned the compliment, and treated his impoverished Southern friends with the utmost kindness.
Taken altogether no hotel in New York can boast of more distinguished guests than the New York Hotel. General Scott lived there for a while. Three presidents have stopped there–Pierce, Tyler and Polk. Three first-class generals–McClellan, Beauregard and Lee. Governor Seymour always stopped there. So did General Robinson and Colonel Jerome Bonaparte. Some of the big men of the Confederate government stayed there before the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis, Mason, Slidell, Admiral Semmes and Robert Toombs, and later on Sam Randall, George H. Pendleton and Thomas F. Bayard have partaken of its state dinners.
Hiram Cranston, like Monnet, made money and got a big farm near Stephenton, New York, where he lived in big style, and where, like Monnet, he died suddenly. He may be looked upon as the last of the old style hotel keepers of New York, who made it a point to know personally, and, as it were, to personally entertain their patrons. This class of hotel men have died out now. New York hotels have grown to be too big, and hotel guests are too many for any hotel-keeper now to take any personal interest in the customers, except to lodge ‘em, feed ‘em, and charge ‘em.
