Resource Guide for Nineteenth-Century Hotels in the United States

Articles, Books, Dissertations, Travelogues, and Websites

Image 1. “The Celebrated Palmer House Barber Shop at Chicago,” 1887, color print, J. Ottman Lithographic Company. Image source: Library of Congress, Digital Archives.

In the early-nineteenth-century, contemporaries struggled to distinguish hotels, from inns, taverns, and restaurants, but here I have mostly followed the practice of the language used in the secondary sources themselves. Sources on inns, restaurants, and taverns which also discuss hotels would make this a longer list.

Articles

Malcolm Bell, Jr, “Ease and Elegance, Madeira and Murder: The Social Life of Savannah's City Hotel,” Georgia Historical Review 76, No. 3 (1992): 551–76.

Molly W. Berger, “The American Hotel,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 25 (2005): 6–9.

Raymond Boryczka, "‘The Busiest Man in Town’: John Hermann Kampmann and the Urbanization of San Antonio, Texas, 1848–1885," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 115 (April 2012).

Carolyn E. Brucken, “In the Public Eye: Women and the American Luxury Hotel,” Winterthur Portfolio 31, no. 4 (1996): 203–20.

Ellen Garwood, “Early Texas Inns: A Study in Relationships,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 60, no. 2 (1956): 219–44.

Richard H. Gassan, “Tourists and the City: New York’s First Tourist Era, 1820–1840,” Winterthur Portfolio 44, nos. 2/3 (2010): 221–46.

William I. Hair, “Stagecoaches and Public Accommodations in Antebellum Georgia,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 68, No. 3 (1984): 323–33.

Kevin J. James, A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, Daniel Maudlin, Maurizio Peleggi, Cédric Humair, and Molly W. Berger, “The Hotel in History: Evolving Perspectives,” Journal of Tourism History 9, no. 1 (2017): 92–111.

Doris Elizabeth King, “The First-Class Hotel and the Age of the Common Man,” The Journal of Southern History 23, No. 2 (1957): 173–88.

Manuel D. Lopez, “Books and Beds: Libraries in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Hotels,” The Journal of Library History 9, no. 3 (1974): 196–221.

Rob Macdonald, “Urban Hotel: Evolution of a Hybrid Typology,” Built Environment 26, no. 2 (2000): 142–51.

Dean R. Montgomery, “The Willard Hotels of Washington D.C., 1847–1968,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington D.C. 66/68 (1966/1968): 277–93.

Martha Ann Peters, “The St. Charles Hotel: New Orleans Social Center, 1837–1860,” Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 1, No. 3 (1960): 191–211.

Ivan D. Steen, “Palaces For Travelers: New York City’s Hotels in the 1850s As Viewed by British Visitors,” New York History 51, No. 3 (1970): 269–86.

Books

Molly W. Berger, Hotel Dreams: Luxury, Technology, and Urban Ambition in America, 1829–1929 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2011).

Daniel Boorstin, “Palaces of the Public,” in The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 134–47.

Catherine Cocks, Doing the Town: The Rise of Urban Tourism, 1850–1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

John Smith Kendall, “Hotel Life in New Orleans,” in History of New Orleans (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1922), 685–697.

Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, Hotel: An American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

Parker Williamson, The American Hotel: An Anecdotal History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930).

Dissertations

Carolyn E. Brucken, “Consuming Luxury: Hotels and the Rise of Middle-Class Public Space, 1825–1860,” PhD diss., George Washington University, 1997.

Daniel Levinson Wilk, “Cliff Dwellers” Modern Service in New York City, 1800–1945,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2005.

Travelogues

John Richard Digby Beste, A Traveler’s Impression of Indiana in 1851 (Fort Wayne, IN: Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1954). Originally published as The Wabash: Or, Adventures of an English Gentleman’s Family in the Interior of America (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1855).

Lucy Isabella Bird, The Englishwoman in America (London: John Murray, 1856).

William and Robert Chambers, Things as They Are in America (London: W & R Chambers, 1857).

Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (London: Clapman and Hall, 1850).

Robert Everest, A Journey through the United States and part of Canada (London: John Chapman, 1855).

G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Excursion through the Slave States, from Washington on the Potomac (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1844).

Lester Shippee, ed., Bishop Whipple’s Southern Diary (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968).

Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: Whitaker, Treacher, & Company, 1832).

Isabella Strange Trotter, First Impressions of the New World (London: Spottiswoode and Company, 1859).

Charles Richard Weld, Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855).

Websites

Livia Gershon, “Why Americans Used to Hate Hotel Workers,” JSTOR Daily, 26 April 2018.

Eleanor Stuck, “The Historic Menger Hotel: A Legacy in San Antonio,” updated 23 January 2023, Handbook of Texas Online.

Historic Hotels of America, “Belleview Inn,” “Concord’s Colonial Inn,” “Omni Parker House,” “Omni Bedford Springs Resort,” “The Menger Hotel History.”

Ghosts of DC, “Christian Heurich Brewing Company,” “Tunnicliff’s Eastern Branch Hotel.”