Ball Room of Metropolitan Hotel - 1859
Original title: Scenes at the Third Metropolitan Hotel Hop, New York. / The Third Hop of the Season at the Metropolitan Hotel, N.Y. - the Ball Room (event on February 16, 1859). Engraving published in the Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, issue February 26, 1859.
Text from the magazine. Title: "The Third Metropolitan Hop."
«One of the pleasantest features in our American hotel life is the practice of assembling the guests of the larger places of public resort in social reunions from time to time, during tae season of gaiety, in the winter months. This agreeable custom is especially honored by the Brothers Leland [proprietors], whose “hops,” in the magnificent Metropolitan Hotel, are celebrated among the best balls of the dancing season. Every three weeks their spacious saloons are thrown open to the guests of the Metropolitan and to other in vités. The third of these gay and brilliant assemblages took place on Wednesday evening, February 16th.
By nine o’clock the curbstone fronting the almost interminable façade of the great hotel begins to be lined with carriages, from each of which appations in pink, and blue, and white, and (purple?) and lemon-color, and many other colored drapery, descend, leaning on the arms of more sober-suited cavaliers, and, tripping through the passage to the stairway, confide themselves to the care of female attendants, who usher them into well-appointed ladies’ robing-rooms, while the gentlemen are cared for in like manner. The upper rooms begin to pour out their additions to the beauty and gaiety of the scene, and the corridors leading to the ball-room are soon crowded with promenading couples, whose elastic steps betray the fascination exerted by the distant strains, which float merrily through the passages from the spot where the band is stationed...»
The five-story Metropolitan Hotel opened in 1852. It was designed in the Italian palazzo style by architects John Butler Snook and Joseph Trench. Inside the structure there was the renowned Niblo's Theatre. The hotel closed in 1895 and it was demolished in the same year.
"Going up the grand stairway" of the Metropolitan. Illustration published in the same magazine.
Ball Room of Metropolitan Hotel - 1859
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