St. Nicholas Hotel on Broadway

The Phalon's hair-cutting saloon in the old St. Nicholas Hotel. Illustration published in the Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (Boston - February 12, 1853). This luxury hotel on Broadway, between Broome and Spring streets, opened in January 1853. The text that accompanied this picture in the magazine is reproduced below:

«The miracle of comfort and taste in New York, is Phalon's sumptuous Hair-cutting Saloon ; its fitting up has cost upwards of twenty thousand dollars. Phalon has long stood at the head of his business in New York, and has reduced it to an art of taste. He has made and spent upon it half a dozen fortunes. He is the Delmonico of his trade — the very Barbiere di Seviglia of New York. He studies the contour of every face and head as carefully as Thorwaldsen a bust. He follows slavishly none of the stupid fashions sent over from Paris. His ideal is exquisite taste, which adapts the length, and parting, and dressing of each man's hair to the shape of the head, the contour and expression of the face, and the spirit of the character. As the worshipper enters, he is arrested on the threshold first by the spectacle of a broad, high window, protected by colorless French plate-glass, where, upon a hemisphere of polished shelves, are arranged all the various oils, pomatums, and other articles which the skill of different nations has invented or prepared for the dressing of the head, with a thousand exquisitely ornamented instruments and appliances to aid in adorning the most impressive and important part of the human form divine. In entering the saloon, the visitor finds himself in a beautiful hall of two departments, the first of which is lighted by a brilliant chandelier, and provided with the most tempting Parisian delicacies of the toilet, adorned on all sides by a splendid mass of mirrors, thirty in number. The expenses for these alone were eight thousand dollars. He also finds frescoed ceilings in gold, by De Lamano, which of itself (at a cost of three thousand dollars) is not only magnificent, but not to be equalled. Beyond is the great hair-cutting and dressing room, with the luxuriously-soft and artistically-carved rosewood chairs, fifteen in number, costing three thousand dollars, by each of which stands an artist, like a sentinel on duty, ready to receive every visitor; the whole room decorated in the most superb and luxurious style ; a tall, bright, clear mirror, reflecting the form of each one from the side of the wall as he takes his seat, and corresponding with another on the other side, thus multiplying image after image, and view after view, until the whole outline is lost in an endless perspective. Each artiste — for Phalon's men are all worthy of that name — is clothed in black velvet coats, elegantly trimmed and cut in the latest style of fashion. Their hands are soft, clean and perfumed, and it is a luxury to have them laid on your face and moved through your hair. The shaving utensils (when not of steel) and the toilet services are of massive silver, with classic designs. The cost of this part of the paraphernalia was five thousand dollars. There is also a magnificent wash-stand and statuary, with a marble floor, at an additional expense of four thousand dollars. This department, at night is brilliantly illuminated by several elegant and costly chandeliers. The whole administers to the taste of the most refined, combined with the fact of their having the hair cut in the latest style of Phalon's fashions, which is so much admired and adopted. In addition, you find the system (adopted originally by Phalon) of giving to every visitor a clean hair-brush is strictly adhered to, — the pleasure of which needs no comment.

Phalon's brushes number one hundred and fifty dozen of the best quality that is manufactured. While in this cool hall, the heated visitor of dog-days sits to enjoy one of the unspeakable luxuries of life — of feeling that the hair is purified, the skin of the head thoroughly cleansed, the beard cut close, so that the face laughs all by itself, while the genial freshness of the grotto air comes like a bath all around the tired body. The conversation is low, but cheerful ; for these artistes will talk to you — the French about the salons of Paris, and the nonchalance with which the Frenchman of the Boulevard has got disgusted with the world, and thrown himself into the Seine; the German about his universities, and socialism, and the Rhine, with the Hockheimer, the castles, and the forty princes with their little potato-patch dominions; the Italian about Michael Angelo and Pius IX., and old Genoa, with its palaces, and the Eternal City, with its St. Peter's — ! All luxury and comfort that taste, skill and money could crowd within the space, has been accomplished, and Phalon's Hair-dressing Establishment, in the St. Nicholas Hotel, New York, is as great a lion, in its way, as the Palace of St. Mark, in Venice. The baths on the lower floor are fitted up at an expense of five thousand dollars, and are the finest in the city. The American who visits New York, find does not go to Phalon's Hair-cutting Saloon, is in infinite danger, during the next fifty years, of departing this life without having had the slightest idea of what it is to be shaved. — Lester's Review.»