Happy Birthday to The Hermitage Hotel! Opened 9/17/1910
As reported the day before opening by the Nashville Banner, on Friday September 16, 1910
Busiest Place in the World – Is the Big Hermitage Hotel on the Even Before Its Opening - Small Army of Workmen - Clatter of Hammers and Tools Sounds Like Storm – Six O’clock Dinner Tomorrow
Without doubt the busiest place in the world barring none – not even the Panama Canal – is the Hermitage Hotel today. The big hostelry will be ready for business tomorrow evening. It will be thrown open to the public at 4 o’clock for dinner and at that time the public will get first peep at the wondrous beauty of the great structure.
That Nashville will gasp in surprise cannot be gainsaid.
Every energy is being lent to have it ready, and Manager Timothy Murphy says it will be ready. The tip is given out, in fact, that by tomorrow evening one will hardly recognize it as the same hotel. The clatter and roar of hundreds of hammers and chisels and other tools make the interior of the big hotel sound like a hailstorm.
Everywhere there is intensified activity. All is bustle and hurry and stir. From the kitchen in the basement to the top floor things are busy, very busy. Most of the big hotel is already finished, and by tomorrow evening wonders will have been wrought.
The great dining hall, with its grand Circassian walnut panels and its beautifully painted ceiling is being finished up. Elegant chandeliers have been swung. The lights are put in place and in the course of a few hours the magnificent festal hall, looking all the world like a picture of some historic old castle’s banquet hall, will be ready for first visitors.
In the big kitchen, chefs and stewards and waiters are hurrying and scurrying. The storeroom and the refrigerators are filled up with supplies, and the kitchen will be ready for that first meal in the great dining room. A feature of the opening of the dining hall will be music from the celebrated Waldorf-Astoria orchestra of New York.
The public will not only be delighted with the dining hall but the big lobby will prove a revelation with its handsome marble walls and entrance of Sienna marble. Every guestroom in the hotel is finished in mahogany, every room is an outside room, and the building is fireproof, noise-proof and dust-proof. There are 250 rooms. The entire eighth floor is devoted to sample rooms. On the ninth floor is a great auditorium. Each room is equipped with hot and cold running water, a bath, a closet, and a cooling fan. The hotel represents an investment of a million dollars, and hotel men who have travelled all over the United States declare there is nothing like the Hermitage in any city of the country the size of Nashville.
Already Manager Murphy and the promoters and directors of the great hostelry are being showered with congratulations.
Mr. W.A. Marshall assistant manager of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and who will be the manager of the new Vanderbilt Hotel to be opened in New York in the fall of 1911 is in Nashville. He is one of the best hotelmen in the country and will remain here with Murphy in an advisory capacity until the first of the year when his service with the new Vanderbilt begins. The big Hermitage will be conducted on the European plan.
As reported August 6, 1910:
One of the very busiest of Nashville men nowadays is Manager Timothy Murphy, of the new Hermitage Hotel. Mr. Murphy is bending every energy to accommodate guests in the million dollar hostelry when the Tennessee State Fair opens in September. It is a task for a big man, but this energetic gentleman appears to fully size up to the situation. He says the hotel will be ready for guests at the date named, and Mr. Murphy’s word goes out as one of the best hotel men in the United States. He has earned this reputation with the country’s leading houses such as the Royal Poinciana of Palm Beach. A representative who was courteously shown through the Hermitage yesterday by manager Murphy was especially impressed with the plans for the kitchen.
Monsieur Jean Baptist Cousy has been engaged as chef-de-cuisine. Chef Cousy’s engagements include Delmonico’s, the Windsor Hotel, and the mammoth Royal Poinciana, Palm Beach, Fla.
The Hermitage will have ideal quarters for chef and assistants. The basement floor is hewn out of solid rock for the most part and affords ample space. There will be no crowding of utensils or equipment, and the atmosphere will be kept fresh by the most modern devices, which are a part of the general system of the ventilation of the hotel.
A huge range made up in sections is built especially for the Hermitage by the Phillips & Buttorff Company, with four large broilers in addition. The chef has the latest and best kitchen equipment with which to work, but this is not all. There will be enormous steam tables, warming ovens, plate warmers, bake ovens, special refrigerators for cooling plates, roll warmers, automatic egg broilers and a hundred odd devices with which speedy service and perfection are assured.
Flanking the range and adjoining the kitchen are supply rooms, pantries, and other departments of the kitchen. Among the labor saving devices, run by electricity, are the knife polisher, potato peeler, dishwasher, ice cream freezers, coffee mills, an ice cuber and ice crusher. It is not usual to allow quests to inspect the kitchen of large hotels, for these are departments where during the busy hours of the day the rush is at its height. Manager Murphy announces that he will be glad to have guests of the Hermitage Hotel visit the kitchen at hours when the restaurant rush is not at its height, to see for themselves the perfection of the appointments, cleanliness, and the care for small details, which provides perfect service in café and main dining rooms.
One of the new features of the Hermitage kitchen will be a separate range and broiler and complete equipment of cooking Southern dishes.
The Hermitage Hotel’s Main Dining room was redesigned by Russell Hart, resident architect. Mr. Hart moved his family to Nashville during construction and stayed on, founding his own firm still operating in Brentwood today as Hart, Freeland, Roberts. Mr. Hart’s accomplishments include rebuilding Nashville’s Parthenon in the 1920s and designing of the”Far Hills” mansion, today the governor’s executive residence.
Building trivia, from the Nashville Banner – November 30, 1909
The electric work in the new Hermitage Hotel is the largest installation in the city, both as to quantity of material and the elaborateness of detail. In its detail it contains a complete conduit system for electric light wiring, telephones, fire alarm signals, watchman’s clock, time clocks on each floor, etc., each system being entirely separate from the other.
The lighting system is the most elaborate in its layout, containing not only the switches in cabinets for controlling the lights, but also a switch for every individual chandelier or group of chandeliers in the building. Each room has a chandelier outlet, bracket outlet, ceiling fan outlet, dresser or toilet stand outlet, portable lamp outlet, and curling iron outlet, all arranged in the most convenient manner. Every detail for the convenience of its guests has been incorporated and nothing has been omitted that could have improved it in the least. The systems will be as complete as any hotel in the United States, excepting none.
It does not seem possible that so much materials would be necessary, but the complete installation will required almost 100,000 feet of conduit (approximately two and one half carloads), about 200,000 feet of rubber insulated wire of the highest grade, besides forty cabinet boxes and panel boards, and numerous push button switches, curling iron heaters, etc. On a basis of the estimated labor it would require one man five years to install the electrical work alone.
From an idea, to a plan, to reality, a pre-construction sketch:
Progress…
Architect JER Carpenter, a native of Mt. Pleasant, near Columbia, Tennessee, moved into his first New York apartment building just 10 days after the grand opening of the Hermitage Hotel. It, too, was distinctively clad with ornamental terra cotta with a fancy façade at street level. Over 40 of Mr. Carpenter’s NYC apartment buildings exist today and are amongst the most sought-after luxury residences in Manhattan.
Carpenter’s other architectural works nearby included the Stahlman Building, the Kirkland Tower at Vanderbilt University, The former St. Thomas Hospital, and the Maury County Courthouse.
An ambitious proposal in 1918 was a new summer capitol for the United States of America on a plateau in West Virginia.
Contributed by Tom Vickstrom
