People met in hotel lobbies

Came across this blog article today. I always like reading old stuff like this and I thought this was kind of fascinating. I thought i'd share some of the more interesting or relevant ones.

jasonlefkowitz.net...

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Washington Post ran a regular column under the charmingly Victorian title “People Met in Hotel Lobbies.”

The premise of the column was pretty simple. Back then...coming and going through hotel lobbies was the sort of thing that marked a person out as someone of significance...So the Post had reporters whose job was simply to hang out in the lobbies of the city’s fashionable hotels, interviewing anybody who happened to walk by.

November 15, 1890: A former House member laments the tendency of modern voters to think for themselves

November 29, 1889: M.L. Parvin, “a bright mulatto” of New Orleans, argues a way forward for African-Americans that would be echoed in Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” six years later.

June 1, 1890: Have you heard Confederate veteran J. L. Vandiver’s Civil War stories? Don’t worry; if you bump into him in a hotel lobby, you are going to.

July 9, 1890: Charles A. Gordon of Mississippi offers an explanation for why African-Americans in his Jim Crowstate don’t vote: they are lazy.

November 28, 1889: Chicago tailor A.M. Denny wants you to understand that American-made clothes are every bit as good as those made in England, thank you very G-D much.

 “Leading lawyer” James Hamilton of Mississippi assures the reporter that, while Mississippians naturally want to keep African-Americans from voting, they would never do anything to achieve that end as outlandish as extending the vote to women.

July 20, 1890:  J.C. McKibben of Florida predicts that, one day, growing oranges in that state will be big business.

April 25, 1890: Thirty years before the Eighteenth Amendment brings Prohibition to the entire nation, S.W. Rathbun explains how it is going to go down.

I always find it interesting how some things and attitudes never change while some things change totally. I always like taking a look at the general thoughts of people from the past.

Wonderful snippets I enjoyed reading them all..

Well presented dug88..

My grandparents used to go to a hotel for New Years. They'd eat in the restaurant, then dance in the ball-room. I remember them having drinks in the lobby with a hundred other social people. That was in the late 60's.

I like watching old film noir, like "The Maltese Falcon." when you're going to ransom a rare artifact for cash, apparently you'd do it in the lobby of a swanky hotel downtown. Just don't let the hotel detective see you!

Hanging out in the lobby of a nice hotel was once fashionable, somewhat like air travel. In the 80’s I often traveled alone on business, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. The thing that I abhored the most was eating dinner alone. You order you food and wait for ever for it to be served while sitting alone in some nice restaurant.

I quickly learned to take a newspaper to dinner to prevent boardom. Later I learned that if the establishment had a bar, I could pass the time talking to the bartender or other patrons. Thank god for me those days are over. My heart goes out to those road warriors, board out of their minds, while being served great food in a gilded cage.