Monday’s Reading Questions
Berger
1. Hotel buildings functioned as “showcases for emerging technologies” (2) through new
ways of heating, plumbing, and lighting systems that were newly advertised to the
American public. Hotel’s technological innovations promised consumers a level of
comfort they might have never experience before.
2. Berger demarcates the time span of the luxury hotel to be from the 1820s to the 1920s;
therefore, about a hundred years.
3. The metaphor of luxury hotels being described as a “city within a city” demonstrates that
hotels were highly urbanized. They offered “a range of services that replicated the city”
(5). Some of which include space for meetings, meals, and room and board. Hotels
provided several amenities of large groups of people at a time who were either “transient
guests of permanent residents” (6). It provided an “idealized version of life outside its
walls” (6). A place for people to temporarily getaway from reality.
4. These three things include the hotel’s political and economic world, its social
organization and influence on America and its technological developments (8).
5. Berger references a theme material culture of hotels in America. The American people
were so vastly enticed by the luxury hotels promised that it became embedded in them.
Thus, hotels were referenced as “palaces of the public” (5).
Braden
1. Leisure class is defined as a group of elite and wealthy people who spent most of their
time and money travelling and socializing. They had privileges and extravagant taste.
2. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (March 1893) by Julian Ralph is a primary text about
the class and financial statues of quests at the Ponce de Leon in Florida (110).
3. Braden argued that women enjoyed freedom at resort hotels because they “provided a
relaxed setting. . . allowing women to participate more freely” (116). Hotels also had
accommodations for children such as private dining rooms and caretakers. Women
particularly felt free because resort hotels gave them lives outside the boundaries of their
fathers’ or husbands’ homes and the burden of managing a household was absent.
4. Hotel staff typically lived in special staff quarters like dormitories which were either
within the hotel or in auxiliary buildings or they could be housed in basements, attics,
stuffy rooms on the top floor. Sometimes they lived in the same places they worked,
including kitchens, stables and laundries (128).
5. Segregation in Florida has several effects on hotel guests and workers. After the Jim
Crow laws were enforced there was an “increase in separately designated spaces for
whites and blacks” (129). Black guests were typically excluded from hotels, restaurants,
theatres, water fountains and other facilities. Low-paying hotel jobs commonly fell to
African-Americans. Though blacks and whites did work together in the hotel industry,
Berger
1. Hotel buildings functioned as “showcases for emerging technologies” (2) through new
ways of heating, plumbing, and lighting systems that were newly advertised to the
American public. Hotel’s technological innovations promised consumers a level of
comfort they might have never experience before.
2. Berger demarcates the time span of the luxury hotel to be from the 1820s to the 1920s;
therefore, about a hundred years.
3. The metaphor of luxury hotels being described as a “city within a city” demonstrates that
hotels were highly urbanized. They offered “a range of services that replicated the city”
(5). Some of which include space for meetings, meals, and room and board. Hotels
provided several amenities of large groups of people at a time who were either “transient
guests of permanent residents” (6). It provided an “idealized version of life outside its
walls” (6). A place for people to temporarily getaway from reality.
4. These three things include the hotel’s political and economic world, its social
organization and influence on America and its technological developments (8).
5. Berger references a theme material culture of hotels in America. The American people
were so vastly enticed by the luxury hotels promised that it became embedded in them.
Thus, hotels were referenced as “palaces of the public” (5).
Braden
1. Leisure class is defined as a group of elite and wealthy people who spent most of their
time and money travelling and socializing. They had privileges and extravagant taste.
2. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (March 1893) by Julian Ralph is a primary text about
the class and financial statues of quests at the Ponce de Leon in Florida (110).
3. Braden argued that women enjoyed freedom at resort hotels because they “provided a
relaxed setting. . . allowing women to participate more freely” (116). Hotels also had
accommodations for children such as private dining rooms and caretakers. Women
particularly felt free because resort hotels gave them lives outside the boundaries of their
fathers’ or husbands’ homes and the burden of managing a household was absent.
4. Hotel staff typically lived in special staff quarters like dormitories which were either
within the hotel or in auxiliary buildings or they could be housed in basements, attics,
stuffy rooms on the top floor. Sometimes they lived in the same places they worked,
including kitchens, stables and laundries (128).
5. Segregation in Florida has several effects on hotel guests and workers. After the Jim
Crow laws were enforced there was an “increase in separately designated spaces for
whites and blacks” (129). Black guests were typically excluded from hotels, restaurants,
theatres, water fountains and other facilities. Low-paying hotel jobs commonly fell to
African-Americans. Though blacks and whites did work together in the hotel industry,
