Early Ventures
In 1901, Buffalo was the host city for the Pan-American Exposition. Statler envisioned and built a hotel on the Exposition grounds and called it "Statler's Hotel." It was a temporary wooden structure intended to last the duration of the Exposition. With 2,084 rooms, it could accommodate 5,000 guests. Although the Exposition was deemed an overall failure due to a number of factors (including bad weather and the assassination of President William McKinley), Statler made a small profit—one of the few vendors to actually do so.
His next venture was the Inside Inn, built for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Another temporary wooden structure, it was the world's largest hotel with 2257 rooms. A grand success, the hotel made Statler a net profit of $361,000 and laid the groundwork for his first permanent hotel. The hotel was then sold for scrap and dismantled. The Inside Inn was near the edge of Forest Park in St. Louis, where Highway 64/40 now traverses the location.
Read more about this topic: Statler Hotels
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or ventures:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“At the moment when a man openly makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes, however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free from the tortures of suppressed envy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)