Context 165 - August 2020

42 C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 hotels in Regency style, both still in business: The Star and The Dolphin. In each, the archi- tectural frontispiece is generated symmetrically at the sides of a grand carriage arch. Named architects such as James Burton could even lend their identity to the design of hotels and their surroundings, creating a coherent and dignified effect. New ‘hotels’ now led the way and began to consign the old inns to the shadows. The railways changed everything after making their first impact in the 1830s. Hotels sprang up at terminals in the cities, at intersections and along the rail routes, and at resorts such as Scarborough or Margate, where the Victorian public could reach the sea. The York Station Hotel represents the investment made by railway companies directly into these massive premises. Resort hotels (or spa hotels) have long existed. From Regency times they began to spring up in increasing numbers and they are still with us, especially along the south coast of England. These resorts were places where the destination was uppermost in the mind of the traveller, and longer stays could be expected. The provision of permanent comforts and amenities overtook the simpler needs of the transitory guest.The upper- floor terraces of the RoyalYork in Sidmouth look out to sea, providing privileged guests with the chance to idle and muse. Cheap hotels are found in converted dwelling houses or faded villas.We all know them, whether from FawltyTowers or for real.Their architectural improvising makes for corridors and stairs so labyrinthine that little notices are needed to point to the exit. The reaction against them has given rise to the concrete anonymity and prison- or hospital-like misery of the American-style chains that arose everywhere from the 1960s. Expensive hotels began to evolve when steel- frame construction took over from load-bearing brick or stone around 1890. Huge investment went into gaining prime sites in city centres, and no expense was spared in fitting them out with restaurants, dance halls, exotic lounges, lifts, central heating, electric light, running water in every room and all the other modern comforts. Layouts make allowance for small armies of back- up staff to work out of sight from the parts of the buildings occupied by guests. Vast quantities of materials such as bed linen are shifted unseen. Grand hotels appealed greatly to the modern imagination. The Hotel des Bains on the Venice Lido provided a setting for Thomas Mann’s novel Death in Venice . Gustav von Aschenbach, the elderly protagonist, is drawn to this comfort- able refuge with its clientele of elegant people, including the handsome young man with whom he becomes obsessed, and looks out from this narrow and sandy strip of land on which the huge hotel stands (1900, later extended; the novel was published in 1912) to the featureless and cruel infinity of the sea, a central death- motif in this account of plague and mass panic. The same building, having proved unsustainable in the 21st century, has joined in the long list of conversions to flats. The Grand, Eastbourne, was the place where Claude Debussy completed work on La Mer, 1905, providing another exam- ple of the effects of seaside locations on compos- ers or other artists at the turn of the century. Although I think about actual ruin, severe damage and gradual decay of real hotels, it is worth considering such imaginary ones as the Grand Hotel Abyss. The name alone would put you off but, no matter, ‘the leading German intellectuals have taken up residence in the Grand Hotel Abyss,’ according to the Hungarian Marxist George Lukacs, ‘enjoying every mod- ern comfort… as they contemplate the abyss’. Writers such as Mann or Lukacs (who wrote in 1952) used the hotel de luxe as a way of making something real out of concepts such as ‘alienation’. Harold Pinter in ‘The Birthday Party’ would later do a similar job on behalf of the English seaside boarding house. Pinter had spells residing inWorthing both before and after the successes of ‘The Dumb Waiter’ and ‘The Birthday Party’ (1957–60). Art deco returns us from the abyss. Its cheerful, popular and accessible architectural language has left us with some remarkable examples from the 1920s and 30s, and after 100 years it is back in fashion. Deco conveys a modernist image of luxury, and the smooth, concrete rendered surfaces in white, cream or pastel colours look best in sunny locations at the seaside. Boutique hotels have had plenty of treatment from comedians ridiculing their absurdities. Boutiques provide a lonely-hearts solution for redundant buildings on difficult sites that might lack adjacent parking. They nearly all over- compensate decoratively for that strange feeling when you first open your eyes in a hotel: ‘Where am I?’ Graham Tite, a second-generation former waiter, sometimes writes, translates or works part-time as a cook. Pub sign at the Rights of Man, Lewes (Photo: Poliphilo, Wikimedia)