The management at the Grand Central Hotel stated that “a great mistake had been made at Saratoga.”
According to the management at the Metropolitan Hotel, “If persons apply for accommodations who are undesirable, there are ways of letting them know they are unwelcome without offending them.”
At the Hotel Brunswick, Mr. E. R. McCarty said that Jews were “good customers and were not hard to please.”
Lewis Leland, the general manager of the Sturtevant House, told reporters, “No one was ever excluded from the Sturtevant on account of religion or race.”
At the Gramercy Park Hotel, management noted that many Jewish guests had stayed there and further noted, “It was never observed that they were unlike other persons living in the hotel in their manners. No complaint had ever been made against any of them.”
At the Hotel Devonshire, Mr. Livermore, the proprietor, said, “The Hotel Devonshire makes no discriminations against Hebrews, nor do I see how it could if it complied with the laws under which hotels conduct their business.”
Ferdinand Earle, owner of Earle’s Hotel, said he thought that the policy of Judge Hilton “seemed suicidal.”
But not every New York City hotel owner disputed Hilton’s new orders in Saratoga.
According to the Times, “Major Field, manager of the Albemarle Hotel said he would not have Jews come to the establishment at any price because they killed a good class of customer wherever they were allowed. They rendered themselves obnoxious to other guests by their egotism and love of display and never settled their bills.”
But in general, the hotel industry did not support Hilton’s outlandish claims. Yet, despite public and industry opinion, or the potential long-term cost of it, Hilton stuck militantly to his discrimination policy at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga.
The repercussions of Hilton’s published response regarding Joseph Seligman’s “class of Jews” was immediate not only on the Grand Union Hotel but also on the Hilton-run A. T. Stewart & Co. stores. Within a day of Hilton’s comments, one hundred Jewish mercantile accounts at the wholesale and retail Stewart businesses were closed and Jewish women throughout the city vowed not to shop at A. T. Stewart’s any longer. According to a report published on June 20, 1877, in the New York Times, these actions by the city’s Jewish community would cost “from $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 a year from Jewish traders alone.” Nearly two-thirds of A. T. Stewart customers were Jewish, the article claimed.
JEWISH MERCHANTS COMBINING
They Are Determined To Deal No More With A.T. Stewart & Co.—The Race Proscribed Through Mr. Seligman—Representative Views From Prominent Clotheirs—No Public Meeting Sought
There was less general interest yesterday in the Grand Union Hotel discrimination. Among the Hebrews however, there is apparently a deep-seated determination to do no more business with the house of A.T. Stewart & Co. There is said to be a paper circulating containing a pledge to have no further dealings with this firm. Interviews with several Jewish merchants are given herewith, which express the opinions of the many whom our reporter conversed. One of them says that Judge Hilton has proscribed the Jewish race through Mr. Seligman and that the race as a body will resent the insult. Few if any are in favor of any public indignation meeting, Mr. Seligman’s friends being satisfied with the expression already made in a private and semi-public way. Judge Hilton compares his manner of rejecting Jewish people with that of some other hotel keepers who, he claims, make just as rigid discrimination in less open manner; he thinks that his method is fairer and that he has done his duty.
—New York TimesJune 22, 1877
Jewish clothiers banded together in their boycott of A. T. Stewart & Co. A majority of Jewish-run businesses agreed that Stewart’s would lose the patronage of Jewish clothing merchants throughout the country. According to the merchants, there would be no further dealings with Stewart’s, certainly no buying anything from it, and only under extraordinary circumstances, selling anything to it. Jewish-run operations comprised three-fourths of the clothier trade.
According to Mr. Hoffman of Hoffman, Goldsmith & Co., located at 139 Duane Street in the city’s clothier district, although Mr. Seligman did not represent all Jews, “The Jews cannot help feeling that their race has been proscribed through Mr. Seligman and resent it for all time.” Hoffman said, “It is idle for Judge Hilton to try to split the hair by an attempted discrimination between the Jew and the Hebrew on the score of religion. … As a race they are united against the outrage upon one of their fellows. … The Jews all know Mr. Seligman and his life and they are satisfied with him as a splendid American citizen.”
“We are unanimously and absolutely resolved to avoid Stewart and Co. henceforth in all business. The line is drawn now not between American and Jew, that is impossible socially and commercially, but between the Jew and ex-Judge Hilton, and the line will never be wiped out,” Hoffman concluded.
JEWISH CLOTHIERS OF ONE MIND
They Will Trade No More With A.T.
Stewart & Co.—The Race Proscribed
Through Mr. Seligman—Opinions Of
Prominent Firms.
Mr. Seligman may or may not be Hilton’s social equal, but I know personally … that the gross description of Seligman’s personal habits given by Hilton has evolved from his inner knowledge of his own self and is considered by those who know him best to be a perfect photograph of the nature of the artist himself. He thought he was describing Mr. Seligman but he was, in a fit of absent-mindedness looking in a mirror at a reflection of himself and painting it for mankind. … Watch the result. I hope Judge Hilton can stand it—we can.
—New York TimesJune 22, 1877
Jewish women throughout the city and the country were even more indignant than their male counterparts about Hilton’s order banning Jews from his hotel. And they were determined to take out their own form of retribution on Hilton and A. T. Stewart & Co. It was well known that Jewish women spent large sums annually at Stewart’s store, some speculated upward of ten thousand dollars in some cases and one thousand dollars per year in other cases. Regardless of the sums, Jewish women closed their accounts at Stewart’s store, in droves. It was projected that the loss of this patronage would be four million dollars in one year alone, a staggering amount.
It was not merely the Jewish community that boycotted A. T. Stewart & Co. A large number of other nationalities, in sympathy with the Jewish victims of Hilton’s discrimination, also joined the boycott. Hilton underestimated the impact the boycott would have. In a June 23, 1877, issue of the New York Tribune, Hilton proclaimed, “I can stand it if they can. A man will buy goods where he can buy them most advantageously … no one—least of all a Jew—is going to bite his own nose off.”
“When we are poor and ignorant we are Jews.
When we are well to do we become Israelites.
When we are rich and influential we are called Hebrews.”
—Baron James Rothschild (1792–1868)
Jesse Seligman, the brother of Joseph, told reporters, “I am at a loss what to think concerning Judge Hilton. In view of his extraordinary statements in to-day’s Times, it would be charitable to suppose that the warm weather had affected his brain.”
According to the brother, the late A. T. Stewart held no opinions as audacious as Henry Hilton’s.
Jesse Seligman told reporters, “Mr. Stewart was a man of great talent, of enlarged and liberal views and of great business foresight. He never for one moment countenanced such silly notions as those of Judge Hilton. If he could realize the gross indiscretion in a business point of view which Mr. Hilton is committing, it would be enough to make him turn in his grave.”
According to Jesse Seligman, Americans weren’t buying any part of Hilton’s prejudicial beliefs.
“The American public were too broad and liberal in their principles to entertain su
ch vulgar and exploded prejudices, and that Judge Hilton would realize his mistake to his cost before the Summer was over,” he said.
Seligman’s brother was not the only outraged party to voice his contempt of Hilton’s behavior. Seligman received letters of support from a vast array of indignant citizens.
“You can well afford to stand for social principle and I hope you will fight it out on the line which Judge Hilton has chosen to assume,” one unidentified supporter wrote.
From Philadelphia, Seligman received a correspondence stating: “We would like to know the truth of the statements which we see in the newspapers. We are dealing largely with the house of A.T. Stewart & Co., and would like to know whether such bigotry really exists with the chief of such an honorable establishment.”
About fifty businesses, from New York City and beyond, all longtime customers of A. T. Stewart & Co., immediately closed their accounts with Stewart’s. Among them were Coleman Brothers and Neustadter Brothers of San Francisco, Kohn & Co. of Chicago, and a host of city establishments, accounting for tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Those buying from Stewart’s were not the only ones who withdrew their patronage. Sellers who for decades had sold their goods to Stewart’s began withdrawing their business as well, accounting for even more financial losses.
Regardless of the public furor, Hilton refused to back down and took great pains to inform reporters of the public support he had received for his actions. He told the Times that he was firmer than ever in his position and was receiving scores of letters and telegrams from across the country commending his exclusion policy. He told reporters that no discrimination against Jews was exercised in any way in the wholesale and retail side of A. T. Stewart & Co., desperately trying to distance the department store side of his affairs from the hotel side. It did little good. Hilton was seen as a bigot, and nothing he could do or say would change what was quickly becoming a widely accepted view of the man who had taken over Stewart’s vast empire.
Yet despite the public outrage and the Jewish boycott, Hilton didn’t even try to make amends. In a letter dated July 9, 1877, written to a friend in Chicago, Hilton boasted, “If they do not wish to trade with our house, I will be perfectly satisfied, nay, gratified, as I believe we lose much more than we gain from their custom. Should the Jews under these circumstances want to draw a sharp line, I might determine not to deal with or purchase from them and then they might possibly find greater reason than ever for feeling bad. Every dollar we sell them is set off by at least $500 purchased from them. … It has not heretofore been my nature to back out or hedge when I have deliberately taken a stand, and I am now too well on in years to begin. … Possibly the Jews may yet regret having made such a fuss about a matter in which they had no cause for complaint. The laws yet permit a man to use his property as he pleases and I propose exercising that blessed privilege, notwithstanding Moses and all his descendants may object.”
As the Jewish boycott hobbled the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, where business fell off even more in succeeding years, the boycott of Stewart’s retail and wholesale businesses caused profits to decline so much that Hilton was forced to suspend operation of the wholesale branch and combine it in space at the retail location. Hilton refused to publicly acknowledge that the Jewish boycott had anything to do with either financial loss.
The Saratoga incident was best summarized by New York City Rabbi Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanuel during his sermon on June 23, 1877: “The absurdity of the attack becomes more apparent if you put the case in legal form: Judge Henry Hilton vs. Jews and Judaism. When that purse-proud man and his ‘model hotel’ at Saratoga and even his Broadway stores shall be all swept away and buried in oblivion, the race which has given the world some of its most highly prized treasures, and which has fought more battles for truth and for the triumph of liberal principles amid Christian civilization than any other, will continue its great historical mission.”
REMOVAL OF THE STEWART WHOLESALE STORE
Judge Hilton says that the rumors of the probable removal up town of the wholesale store of A.T. Stewart & Co. are true, and that the downtown store may be closed by the 1st of December. The process of removal to the up-town store has been going on for some time and about one-half of the wholesale department has been transferred.
—New York Times
November 13, 1878
Between the debacle of his foray into the Chicago market and the boycott of his hotel, retail, and wholesale businesses by the Jewish community, it would seem as if Hilton’s troubles couldn’t get any worse. But the straw that appeared to break the camel’s back—and another prime example of Hilton’s ineptitude—was the closing of one of Alexander Stewart’s major and most visible acts of philanthropy, the Working Women’s Hotel, on May 26, 1878.
Stewart had intended the Working Women’s Hotel to be a philanthropic gesture. He had wanted to build an affordable hotel for working women in New York where they could live in a secure, clean, comfortable, and upscale environment at a reasonable cost.
The building was begun in January 1869 and took nine years to complete at a cost of $3.7 million. Stewart, who had checked in on the construction of his grand experiment almost daily, said of it, “That hotel will make 1,000 working women happy and independent. If it succeeds the example will be imitated. It will be a woman’s kingdom, where those of them that wish to be alone can be so. It will prove whether or not the sexes can live apart, and whether or not it will be better for them to do so, whether or not they will choose to.”
At the time of Stewart’s death in 1876, the hotel, on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Thirty-second and Thirty-third Streets, had not been completed. The grand gesture by Stewart was welcomed by thousands of working women in New York and notably by members of the growing feminist movement, who saw Stewart’s hotel as another major foothold for women in the working environment. Even before Stewart’s death, though, Hilton had openly expressed his doubts about the project, calling it impractical. And so it was with a great deal of elation that women throughout the city read in the newspapers that Hilton fully intended to complete the Working Women’s Hotel. Their elation was, however, short-lived.
The hotel had the capacity of one thousand patrons and guests. The building covered sixteen lots formerly owned and occupied by the locomotive shops of the Hudson River Railroad. It was approximately two hundred feet square and seven stories high, constructed as a square to let the maximum amount of light and ventilation into the rooms. In the center of the lobby was an elaborate fountain surrounded by an assortment of plants and vases of flowers. Aside from its magnificent cosmetics, the building was fireproof, built almost entirely of brick, iron, and stone. On its roof were two enormous iron tanks holding thirteen thousand gallons of water to be piped throughout the hotel. There were numerous wide staircases throughout the hotel and five elevators that ran from the basement to the roof. Two of the elevators were in the rear of the hotel, to be used as freight elevators; two were located in the front for patrons and guests; and a main central elevator was located at the very front of the building.
Of the 502 private rooms in the hotel, 115 were double rooms, measuring approximately thirty by sixteen feet. The remaining 387 rooms were designed for single occupancy and were half the size of the double rooms. They were furnished with heavy, expensive, custom-made marble-topped black walnut furniture and decorated with paintings from Stewart’s collection. The rooms were indeed small, and more than half had no clothes closets or wardrobes—a glaring oversight, or perhaps intentional, considering what Hilton ultimately did.
Every floor was covered with plush, expensive carpeting. Each room was supplied with gas and hot and cold water and was heated by the giant boilers in the basement. Semiprivate bathrooms were available on every floor with attendants to assist boarders. There was also a huge laundry room for dropoffs. The main dining room had a seating capacity of six hundred peo
ple and was under the supervision of a French chef who had previously worked at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga. There were several spacious reception rooms for guests and entertaining and a fifty-five-by-one-hundred-foot parlor. A library, with 2,500 volumes, and a reading room were also available. Throughout the library, reception rooms, parlor, dining room, and hallways, a number of paintings were hung and sculptures placed on display.
Women had to adhere to a plethora of rules and restrictions, including no guests in their rooms, a ban on additional furniture, a cost of ten cents imposed on baths, and no pets. None of these were deal breakers for most working women longing to stay. It was, by all Gilded Age standards, an elegant and luxurious hotel. It was also the largest hotel in New York City.
When he was alive, A. T. Stewart stipulated that the $3.7 million enterprise would not be required to ever produce a profit. He intended it to be self-supporting, and if not, the Stewart estate was to supplement any deficiency in its revenues. If, according to Stewart, the hotel did show a profit, then that profit was to be applied to the rates of guests in proportion to the surplus. Under no circumstances was any woman to be charged more than $5 a week for her board and single room lodging. According to the New York Times, Stewart intended to “give the working women of New York the best hotel accommodations, the best rooms, best furniture, best food, best attendance, best living for less than $5 per week.”
THE WOMEN’S HOTEL OPEN
A GREAT ENTERPRISE BEGUN.
The Most Brilliant Reception Ever Held
In New York—Twenty Thousand People
Bag of Bones Page 9