Hotel McAlpin with its own orchestra and hospital
2 weeks ago
Near the end of 1912, when construction was nearly complete, at 25 stories it was the world’s largest hotel.
The Hotel McAlpin was designed with 2 gender-specific floors and a floor dubbed the “sleepy sixteenth” for night workers.
On Christmas Eve 1916, a 19-year-old was sexually assaulted and beaten by an attacker who had rented 2 rooms on either side of his suite to muffle the screams.
The amenities of the Hotel McAlpin were as breathtaking as they were opulent including a massive Turkish bath and plunge pool on the 24th floor. The hotel also had its own in-house orchestra, as well as its own fully-equipped hospital.
Pamela Sneed. Photo: Patricia Silva.
Uncle Vernon was cool, tall, hazel-eyed, and brown-skinned. He dressed in the latest fashions and wore leather long after the sixties. Of all of my father’s three brothers, Vernon was the artist a painter and photographer in a decidedly nonartistic family. To demonstrate his flair for the dramatic and avant-garde, his apartment was stylishly decorated. It showcased a faux brown suede, crushed velvet couch with square rectangular pieces that sectioned off like geography, accentuated by a round glass coffee table with decorative steel legs. It was pulled together by a large seventies organizer and stereo that nearly covered the length of an entire wall. As a final touch, dangling from the shelves was a small collection of antique long-legged dolls. This was my uncle and memories of his apartment were never so clear as the day I headed there with my first boyfriend, Shaun Lyle.