Construction
George Boldt owned the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel outright. The present building opened in 1904. Over two years in the making and costing over $8,000,000 (in 1904 dollars), the Bellevue-Stratford was described at the time as the most luxurious hotel in the nation and perhaps the most spectacular hotel building in the world. It initially had 1,090 guest rooms, the most magnificent ballroom in the United States, delicate lighting fixtures designed by Thomas Edison, Tiffany and Lalique glass embellishments, and the most celebrated marble and hand-worked iron elliptical staircase in the city.
Later, during the 1920s through the 1940s, the noted global host Claude H. Bennett, managed the rebuilt and greatly enlarged Philadelphia hotel. His son, Robert C. Bennett (Cornell Hotel School 1940), and grandson, Robert Jr. (Drexel Hill, PA), currently a Professor of Hotel Management at a suburban Philadelphia community college (Delaware County Community College), were both on the senior management staff of the "Grand Dame" of Broad Street as late as the 1970s prior to the temporary hotel closing.
Read more about this topic: The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
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—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
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—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)