ARCHITECTURAL STANDARDS AND CONSIDERATIONS

Before an architectural office begins planning and designing a hotel, it should know
exactly how a hotel operates. Every type of building must function smoothly to achieve the end
result that the client is seeking.
Hotels are designed and built so that the client, owner, or operator of the hotel will get a
satisfactory financial return on his investment. In order to achieve the greatest return for the
money invested, we again face a dual problem. In the first instance, the guest must feel
completely comfortable and at ease from the moment lie steps through the entrance doorway,
checks in, goes to his room, avails himself of the food and beverages available, and spends a
comfortable night in a well-appointed, scrupulously clean room, and returns the next day to a
room which is as fresh and inviting as it was the moment he first entered it after checking in.
Everything for the guests creature comforts should be carefully considered, whether it be the
ease of finding the registration desk, the cashier, the bars and dining rooms, the elevators that
will take hint up to his room, and finally the room itself. The service at the registration desk, in
the bars and dining rooms, arid in the guest room itself as well as in the corridors must be such
that the guest finds his every want courteously and efficiently taken care of. The physical
environment becomes an important part of the guest's creature comfort. These factors include
color and decor, lighting, proper air temperature, comfortable furnishings and, above all, a
pleasant and relaxed atmosphere. Everything that the guest expects and should get will be a
result of what takes place at the back of the house. It is only in this area that everything that will
keep a guest contented during his stay is arranged for and so ordered that everything the guest is
seeking is accomplished unobtrusively and, what is most important, economically.

BACK-END SERVICES & MAINTENANCE

Deliveries and Supplies
Though rarely seen by a guest, the back of the house is the most crucial part of the plan.
It must be laid out with two paramount objectives: control and efficiency. Foodstuffs, housekeeping supplies, and a great many other items must be received out of sight of the hotel guests.
Such receiving is usually done at a loading dock, which should be covered so that deliveries can
be made regardless of the weather. An operating hotel, even a small one, will have deliveries
going on throughout the day. The receiving of shipments as well as the checking of whatever
comes into the hotel and, finally, sending the various items received to their proper destination
must be under tight control. This is usually the function of a receiving department that should be
located directly on or adjacent to the loading dock. Tight control must be exercised in two
directions. In one direction, it is not uncommon for material to be delivered and, within a short
time of its having been left on the dock unchecked, for the management to find that this material
has disappeared or that some parts of the shipment have gone astray. The second part of the
control is to make sure that, once these shipments have arrived, they go directly to their
destination without a chance of becoming lost on the way. Pilferage will apply to almost every
item, including linens, foodstuffs, wine and even items of furnishings. A good back-of-the-house
plan will be worked out in such a way that the flow of supplies is tightly con-trolled by the
security that the architect works into his plan. A tight, well-planned back of the house will have
circulation patterns that will provide the utmost in control. It is this type of planning that is
definitely the province of the architect.

Garbage Handling
There is one further item in the control area which, at first glance, might seem highly
unimportant: namely, the movement of garbage out of the hotel to a point where it will be picked
up by garbage trucks. Experience has indicated that a good deal of pilferage in hotels is
accomplished through the medium of garbage removal. Well-wrapped steaks and cans of food
can be concealed in garbage and removed by an accomplice before the garbage haulers pick up
the refuse. In the larger hotels, garbage destructors or compressors may be used, in which case
tight surveillance is necessary only in the garbage receiving area. Where garbage is shipped out,
it is wise to have the garbage rooms so placed (and, incidentally, refrigerated) that the receiving
office has this space in full view to discourage an outside accomplice or an employee who is
leaving the hotel from entering the garbage room to filch what was placed there previously by
someone in the kitchen or the supply areas.
Employee Areas and Access Planning
Another form of control which must be exercised and which becomes a part of the
architect's planning is the flow of personnel into and out of the hotel. Hotel personnel usually
come through at a point close or adjacent to the receiving area. This is not necessarily a must, but
it is advisable because the same control office can observe the coming and going of the help .
Usually time control is through the medi-um of a time clock, which is punched by the employees
. It is not uncommon for thieves to attempt entry through the service area and to work their way
up through service elevators to accomplish what they came for. A tight control at the point of
entry and egress of all employees is highly desirable and can easily be accomplished if it is the
same point as that at which food and other hotel supplies are brought in. Once again, the

architect's careful planning will make it possible for employees to reach their various dressing
and locker areas with a minimum of travel time lost. It must be borne in mind that there is class
distinction in hotels and, as an example, that dishwashers and porters are not placed in the same
locker rooms as head waiters and reception clerks. The distinction here is for from a fine line .
The mix of hotel employees will be dictated by the hotel operator, and he may determine whether
waiters and bellmen are to be placed together or separated. Maids and waitresses may or may not
be in the same locker room, depending on the hotel operation. Locker rooms should be provided
with ample toilet facilities and showers. Once the personnel have changed into their uniforms,
the plan of the back of the house will make it possible for the people to get to their work stations
with little time lost. Maids and porters will want to get to service elevators along the shortest
possible route. Chefs, cooks, and dishwashers should get to their work areas without going
through long, tortuous passages. It is usual to issue uniforms in an area as close to the locker
rooms or the point of entry as possible. In this phase of planning, it should be borne in mind that
uniforms are usually under the control of the housekeeper, so that the proximity of the uniform
issuing room to the house-keeping department becomes a most important consideration. It should
also be borne in mind that the housekeeper controls soiled and clean laundry as well as clean
uniforms ready for reissue. The interplay of all of these activities will dictate a finesse in
planning to bring all these activities together and to achieve as little loss in time and motion as
possible.
Laundry Facilities
A laundry is a usual adjunct of most good-sized hotels. Many hotels avail themselves of
city laundry service, in which case there is no laundry room at all or only a small laundry which
handles towels only. A hotel laundry that does its own uniforms and flatwork (sheets,

pillowcases, linens, etc.) requires a good-sized space for washers, dryers, drum ironers, and
various pressing machines-each suitable for its own type of flatwork, uniforms and guests'
laundry, and men's and women's wearing apparel. If the laundry is done by a laundry service out
of the hotel, then items like towels require a comparatively small space for washing and drying,
since only washers and fluff dryers are necessary, together with an area for folding and stacking
the clean towels. Larger hotels will maintain their own cleaning department for dry cleaning and
pressing of woolens and similar garments. Such a cleaning and valet service is usually a part of
or close to the laundry area, and it is definitely under the supervision of the laundry manager. It
may be that, in the not-too-distant future, experiments with disposable sheets, pillowcases, and
uniforms will do away with laundry services in hotels. Presently, the disposable types that have
been produced are still not of sufficient strength and durability for hotel use, although the future
may produce exactly that. At present some "no iron" linens are in use, thus eliminating some of
the large ironers.
Housekeeping
The housekeeping department, having several functions, is the province of the chief
house-keeper, who will usually have assistant floor housekeepers. Under the housekeeper's strict
control and supervision will be all the maids and porters. These people, after donning their
uniforms, will come to the housekeeper for instructions and vary often for supplies to take with
them to the various guest-room floors. The porters will deliver to the service areas on the guestroom floors all linen and soap as well as facial tissue, toilet paper, matches, room service menus,
and ashtrays. (Most hotels use inexpensive ashtrays that carry the hotel name and that the guests
may take along as souvenirs.) The housekeeper's area is also a storage area, for here are kept all
the supplies that become a part of housekeeping. Aside from such obvious things as a stock of

linen, paper goods, soaps, etc., the housekeeper will carry in her warehouse storage area
additional lamps (which are easily broken by guests) and small items of furnishings which are
easily removed or destroyed. In the housekeeper's department there will usually be s place for a
seamstress to mend those sheets, pillowcases, and drapes that need repair. It might be useful for
the architect to know how many rooms a maid can make up during her daily tour of duty. In
addition to the regular daytime maid, there will be, in most hotels, a night maid who will make
up beds for guests ready to go to sleep. This entails the removal of the bedspreads, straightening
of the room, the supplying of additional soap, toilet paper, etc., all for the guests' convenience.
One night maid usually can handle twice as many rooms as a day maid handles.
Food and Beverage Service
Today's food operation is a highly complicated one, and an architect should be familiar
with the entire operation. Most hotel kitchens and food preparation areas are planned by experts
known as kitchen engineers. It is not the architect's province to plan a kitchen, but it is cer-tainly
helpful for the architect to have a good working knowledge of what takes place in the food
preparation area and in the kitchens . It will make for better communication between the architect
and the kitchen engineer when they are discussing the planning of these spaces . Just one word of
caution-each expert will want more space than the plan can possibly allow. They don't really
need that much space. The kitchen engineer will conjure up visions of irate chefs stalking off the
premises, but experience has indicated that the architect's knowledge of what the requirements
are will temper the demands of the kitchen engineer .
Let us follow the flow of the raw food from the time it is delivered to the steward until it
is finally cooked and ready to be picked up by the waiters or the waitresses. After the comestibles

have been weighed in, checked, and signed for, they are sent to either dry storage or liquor
storage (a room with a big lock on it) or to one of the various cold holding rooms or boxes.
Canned food and other bottled or packaged food which does not need refrigeration will be sent to
dry-storage rooms. In this storage space will also be kept the various condiments that the chef
will need in the preparation of his food. Vegetables will be sent to Small portions of whatever
food is called for on the waiters order. This food preparation area will have reach-in boxes for
cuts of meat and fish which have been prepared and are ready for the final stage of cooking. The
chef reaches in and takes out what he needs to prepare the required dish. Off to one side,
somewhere in the waiter's line of traffic, will be the garde manger section. Here have been
delivered all the prepared vegetables and fruits so that the garde orange (can arrange salads,
prepare cold desserts, and work up tire various types of hors d'oeuvre as well as seafood
cocktails and other cold items for the start of a meal car salads that accompany the main dish.
The garde manger, on special occasions, will prepare special trays of cold, exotic dishes used for
buffets or banquets. He will have his own reach-in boxes for all the types of fruits, vegetables,
seafoods, garnishes, etc., that are used. Farther along the waiter's course will be a section, close
to tire exit, where such items as bread and rolls, butter, coffee, tea, ice, and other items are
stored. Bread and rolls may be in a roll warmer. Here also will be found the coffee urns, toasters,
and egg boilers. This entire area is for self-service by the waiters, who will pick up the items they
need on their way to the guest waiting for the delivery of his food. A bus boy has picked up the
soiled dishes after a guest has completed his meal. He brings the soiled dishes into that kitchen
area which is allocated for dishwashing. In some cases the waiter will pick up his own soiled
dishes and deposit them in the dishwashing area. This is a very noisy operation in which sound
should be carefully baffled; but because of the need to get the dishes from the dining room to the

dishwasher, the dishwasher is usually placed close to the dining room area so that the dishes can
be dis-posed of as soon as the waiter or busboy enters the kitchen.
The dishwashing area is, of notes sity, not only noisy but also a rather untidy operation,
so it must be kept fairly isolated from the actual cooking and serving area. The reason for
keeping it within the kitchen is obvious since the dishes, as soon its they have been properly
cleaned, will be brought back into the kitchen area for the service of freshly prepared food. The
waiter, coming into the kitchen, places his orders and follows a definite path along the cooks and
chefs' serving tables, the garde manger's serving tables . and the pick-up area . Then, before
entering the dining room, he will usually go by a checker's desk where he presents a check
indicating the items that he is taking out of the kitchen to the diner.
A checker controls all foods and beverages leaving the kitchen area to make sure that the
items are correct and the prices properly indicated. One other space will usually occur in our
ideal kitchen--a service bar with a bar-tender who will prepare tire drinks that the waiter has
ordered. Here again, it roust be on the direct path of travel, so that after the pre-pared drinks have
been picked up by the waiter, he will pass the checker, who will check off the drink items as to
quantity and price . Before leaving the kitchen, we must look at some other areas that we will
usually find in our ideal kitchen. There will be a chef's office, which is set where the chef can
observe all the activities in tire kitchen. His office is usually enclosed with glass to give him
aural privacy but complete visual control. Here the chef will prepare and plan menus. He will be
placing orders for food and will generally be operating a rather complicated and meticulous part
of the hotel service.

In addition to the chef's office, there may be two other areas (once again, assuming that
everything is happening on this one level). The first of these is the room-service area. Here there
must be sufficient space for a fairly large number of room-service rolling tables, which are set
and ready to carry the dishes that have been ordered by the guest via telephone. In the warming
compartment below the tablecloth, the room-service waiter will place the hot dishes, and on top
of the rolling service table he will place the cold dishes. The room-service area is always close to
tire cooking and garde manger area. Much of the room service will consist of breakfasts or
sandwiches and salads. Wherever a hot dish is called for, the room-service waiter will pick it up
at the chef's cooking area. The room-service area should, of necessity, be as close to the service
elevators as possible. These, of course, must come (town to the kitchen from the service areas on
each of the guest floors. Normally, we will find a room-service operator, who sits at a telephone
taking calls from the guests. These calls are especially numerous in the morning, when many
guests are calling in for their breakfasts rather than coming down to the dining room. The
cooking area, consisting mainly of griddles, will be manned by short-order chefs who are ready
to prepare various hot breakfast dishes, and the garde manger section will be manned by a crew
who are expert in the preparation of breakfast menus. For the rest of the day, sandwiches and
salads coming from the garde manager will be most in demand.
Another part of the kitchen will be devoted to tire banquet area. We are assuming that this
hotel is not too large and does not require a separate banquet kitchen but rather a banquet serving
area. We will see again that the chefs will prepare the banquet food, managing their schedule so
that it does not interfere with lunch or dinner. In the banquet area there will be mobile cabinets
that take trays. These are electrified cabinets arranged to keep dishes either hot or cold. Those
banquet cabinets can be stocked before a banquet for certain types of manes. In other instances,

where steak and roast beef are oil the banquet menu, there must be areas in which the chef can
broil the steaks or large ovens where a number of roasts can be prepared at the same time . A
large banquet area in a hotel will require a separate banquet kitchen with its own cooking
facilities as well as its own dishwashing area. Here the architect must review the food service
requirements and, working with the kitchen engineer, determine the location of the banquet
cooking and service area. Very often the banquet facilities are not on the same floor as the dining
rooms, in which case there would have to be an elevator connecting the main kitchen with the
banquet area.
There are many new types of floor preparations which can be applied directly over the
concrete slab and which lend themselves to easy cleaning as well as offering a firm foothold to
prevent slipping on wet spots. The walls, in most kitchens, were usually ceramic tile. Here again,
the new plastic materials are by some standards even better than tile, with its cement joints and
the possibility of spalling tile. By all means, every effort should be made to hold down the noise
level in the kitchen.
Mechanical Spaces
Another area that should be considered in designing the back-of-the-house spaces will be
the boiler or mechanical room. In this area will be found the various pieces of equipment for
heating and cooling as well as all the tanks and pumps to keep all the mechanical systems in
operation. Each mechanical room will be of a size and shape that will satisfy the require-ments
for all the creature comforts that a modern hotel has to offer. In this area will also be found all
central switch gear that controls electric current for every purpose in the hotel complex. This
domain belongs to the house engineer and, naturally, there should be pro-vision for an engineer's

office, with a mechanical repair shop close by. There are a number of other shops that probably
will be located in this area of the hotel. These would include a carpentry shop, an upholstery
shop, and definitely an area for a locksmith. Somewhere in the area, where they are easily
accessible, will be storage rooms in which will be kept a multitude of spare parts to service the
hotel. Some of this storage space will be used for mechanical equipment replacements, and other
storage areas will contain spare parts for the furniture, carpet replacements, wallpaper
replacements, cleaning materials, and cleaning equipment that will be used by the house porters .
Administrative Areas
Included in these areas you will find accounting and bookkeeping offices (which back up
the front cashiers); reservations offices (which back up to the front registration desk) ; and
offices for management, which will include a reception area, a manager's office, and an assistant
manager's office . In this part of the hotel complex one would usually find the head of the food
and beverage department, who may double as the banquet manager. There will be a mail sorting
room, which might well be placed behind the registration desk, since guests' mail is delivered at
this point. More will be said about all these spaces when front-of-the-house operation is
discussed further. Before leaving this area, we should note the fact that there will probably be a
secretarial pool to handle all the spaces that have been enumerated above.

FRONT-END SERVICES
Guest Registration
A hotel registration desk must be located so that it is immediately visible as one enters the
hotel lobby. The size of the desk will be determined by the size of the hotel. There is no special
rule to be followed except that a hotel of let us say, 2,000 rooms might have anywhere from four
to six registration clerks, while a hotel of 100 to 200 rooms will have one or at roost two spaces
at which guests may register . Deluxe hotels now make use of computers which serve to indicate
time of arrival of guests who have made reservations, time of departure of guests who are
already checked into the hotel, and systems whereby the registration clerk can also be informed
whether the room has been vacated and whether the room has already been made up by the maid
on the floor and is ready to receive a new guest. The architect should acquaint himself with the
requirements of the front desk and also be aware of certain companies who manufacture the
filing systems and the electronic equipment which is used for reservation and guest control.
Advance Reservations
The hotel industry depends primarily on advance reservations to keep its rooms filled.
The traveling public is aware of this fact, and most travelers will book their reservations in
advance. Chain hotels and chain motels have developed complicated and efficient electronic
systems for advance reservation bookings which are made from any point within the chain. The
systems employed are very much like the systems now being used by airlines for bookings and
reservations. Whether the system be the involved electronic system or whether it be a reservation
made by telephone or wire, a reservation clerk within a reservation office in the hotel will take
care of all these requests for rooms. Since questions do arise at the time when the guest is

checking in, the location of the reservation office must obviously be as close to the front desk as
the plan will permit. This will enable a reservation clerk to go back to the reservation department
to check on a questionable reservation or to adjust any problems which may arise at the time that
the new guests are checking in.
Keys
There are two other services that the front or registration desk must perform. The first and
obvious one is to serve as the place where the room keys are kept. Some of the larger hotels have
room-key clerks whose functions consist only of receiving keys from guests as they leave the
hotel and giving the incoming guests, either upon registration or during their stay, the keys to
their rooms. If the hotel is large enough to require a separate area and separate personnel for
handling of keys, this function will usually be alongside the actual registration desk. Since it is
comparatively simple for someone to ask for a key who is not entitled to it and who may be
using that key to enter and rob an absent guest, it behooves the architect to realize that some
control is necessary in the handing out of keys to make sure that keys are given only to the
registered guests for that particular room.
Cashier and Bookkeeping
The average hotel usually has the cashier's counter located adjacent to the registration
desk. There is no hard and fast rule concerning this close interrelationship. The larger hotels may
place cashiers in the so-called "front desk" area but somewhat remote from the actual registration
desk. There are times in large hotels, especially those catering to conventions, where one
convention is checking out while another is checking in. This will make for traffic congestion
and some confusion. Such a situation can be avoided by planning the registration and cashier

facilities so that lines forming in front of the registration desk do not conflict with lines forming
at the cashier's counter. The cashier in the smaller hotels will handle most of the bookkeeping.
Very often the night cashier will handle a good deal of the bookkeeping, relieving the daytime
staff of this chore. Larger hotels will have a complete bookkeeping department. This will require
more than just the actual cashiers, who remain at their stations, while the bookkeeping
department handles all entries and bookkeeping for the guests. It is obvious that this
bookkeeping department should be close to if not backed up to tire front desk cashiers, so that
any questions of charges can be quickly checked and adjusted by the cashier, who will contact
the bookkeeping department for clarification or corrections in the guests' bills.
Safety Deposit Service
Conveniences will usually be found in the cashier's area for guests who bring valuables
with them, whether it be cash, jewelry, or important papers. Guests are requested by hotel
management to leave such valuables in the hotel's safe deposit boxes or vault. It is desirable to
have the guest transfer his valuables to a cashier out of sight of the public occupying the main
lobby. Therefore, a small closed room is normally provided. The guest enters this room and gives
the valuables to the cashier through a pass-through window. This pass-through window should
have a view of the vault or the safe so that the guest can watch his valuables being deposited
properly. Where safe deposit boxes are furnished by the hotel, the cashier will hand ar key to the
guest. The same procedure will be followed when the guest wishes to withdraw his valuables
from the safekeeping of the hotel. This convenience is especially useful in large resort or
convention hotels where women guests will be wearing jewelry on special occasions. A closed
room makes it possible for the guest to deliver and receive the jewelry without being observed, a
precaution that is most necessary in today's theft-prone society. A hotel cashier must also handle

the cash from restaurants and coffee shop. The cashiers in these facilities will be bringing their
cash receipts to the central cashier.
Administrative Areas
The administration of a hotel operation depends entirely upon its size. A larger, mediumsized hotel will have a manager and an assistant manager and, as a rule, there will be a reception
office where one or two receptionists will be acting as a buffer between the public and the
manager. As a hotel project grows larger, the administrative area grows more complex. Aside
from the manager and the assistant manager, there may be an office for a food and beverage
manager and a banquet manager. A larger hotel, with sizable convention facilities, will also have
an office for the convention manager and his assistants. As the complexity of the office and
administrative area grows, a more careful and detailed study is made to arrange a smoothly
functioning suite of administrative offices together with secretarial pools, bookkeepers, etc. It
must be borne in mind that this front of the house works closely with the back of the house.
Many of the people in the administrative area will deal with guests as well as hotel customers
seeking to arrange for luncheons, banquets, and conventions. Accessibility to the public,
therefore, is of the utmost importance.
Restaurant Facilities
Every hotel, whether it has 50 rooms or 2,000, must consider the feeding of guests. Small
hotels may get by with a pleasant coffee shop restaurant. This type of unit is becoming more
popular in the smaller hotel where feeding facilities are kept to a minimum. Such a facility would
be the type where quick coffee shop service could be offered a guest, either at a counter or at a
table, and where, within the same apace, more leisurely dining could be provided. The difference

between the two is achieved primarily through decor end atmosphere rather than any physical or
structural arrangement. In such a facility, it is possible to take care of a large breakfast business
using the entire facility. There are occasions when a visual separation between coffee shop and
restaurant is made movable, so it can be taken away during the breakfast-hour rush. For
luncheon, the division is re-established, making it possible to serve quick meals for those in a
hurry in the coffee shop area and more leisurely luncheons in the restaurant portion. In the
evening, it is possible to get a more permanent type of separation between coffee shop end
restaurant by pushing the coffee shop separator around the counter area, thus allowing for
maximum table and seating arrangements in the so-called restaurant area when the coffee shop is
doing a minimum business. Under normal situations there will be a cocktail lounge or beverage
bar even in the smallest dining facility. The larger hotel will have a pleasant coffee shop for
quick service and for simpler meals, whereas a restaurant, with its appropriate decor for more
leisurely dining, will offer a more varied menu with probably higher cost per meal than in the
coffee shop. The cocktail lounge will usually be found close to the dining room so that hotel
guests can pause for a cocktail before lunch or dinner, or while waiting, before going to the
dining room, to meet friends or other guests. Where convention facilities are offered within a
hotel, it is wise to have a bar placed close to the convention facilities. Conventioneers seem to
have a propensity for a cocktail before or after meetings. This impulse-type of beverage buying
is boosted tremendously if beverage facilities are placed in the normal path of traffic. There is no
special requirement for the design of hotel restaurants, bars, cocktail lounges, and coffee shops
which are in any way different from the standard requirements for any such facility. Attention is
called to the fact that people staying at hotels have a tendency to seek out highly touted specialty
restaurants within an area rather than eating their meals in the hotel. This is especially true for

evening dining. Toward that end, hotels more and more are turning to specialty restaurants whose
specialty is not only food but also decor, so that they can compete favorably with individual
restaurants in the general area of the hotel. The same hotel kitchen can prepare almost any type
of special food including Chinese, Polynesian, seafood, or gourmet dishes. The important thing
to remember in laying out these spaces is that the decor must be developed to entice the hotel
guests to eat in the hotel rather than outside in other specialty restaurants . Continuing in this
vein of specialized feeding, some hotels are installing roof-top restaurants where a view of the
city or the general area is available and in which fairly limited menus are offered-mostly openhearth kitchen service which includes steaks, chops, and cuts of roast beef . Such a menu
requires a very small kitchen and obviates the need for creating large, expensive facilities on a
roof for specialty cooking. Wherever a rooftop restaurant is created, the architect must bear in
mind that there will be increased traffic in the elevators taking diners from both in and outside
the hotel to this specialized rooftop facility. And don't forget that, because of public assembly
requirements, the stairs must be sized larger. Supper clubs or nightclubs will also be found in the
larger hotels. When faced with this type of dining and entertainment feature, the plans must
include not only a stage of sorts, together with the attendant stage lighting, but also dressing
rooms for performers and a room for the orchestra. It is highly desirable to keep such an adjunct
as close to the main kitchen as possible. In the planning of large hotels that encompass all the
dining facilities already mentioned, it may not be possible to operate out of one central kitchen.
In this case there may be several kitchens, preferably on a horizontal core, so that there is the
possibility of vertical distribution of food from the preparation areas which would probably be on
the lower level. Lobbies Every hotel, regardless of its size, must have a public lobby. The size of
the lobby is largely determined by the number of guest rooms as well as by the type of hotel that

is on the architect's drawing boards . It goes without saying that the larger the hotel, the larger the
lobby. The lobby will also have to be larger in a resort or convention hotel. A resort hotel will
require a large lobby because guests will congregate there in the evening. A hotel catering to
conventions needs a large lobby because here again there is a constant gathering of
conventioneers before they go off to lectures, seminars, meetings, luncheons, and dinners. There
is no rule of thumb to determine the size of a lobby. One must proceed by making a careful study
of similar types of hotels and arrive at decisions after discussions with hotel opera-tors and
managers. A hotel lobby sets the mood for a hotel. This apace, more than any other, will create
the first and usually the most lasting impression. Furnishings, color, finishing materials, lighting,
and decor must create the proper ambience regardless of whether the hotel is large or small, in a
city or a resort, moderately priced or expensive. The interior designer plays a most vital part in
planning and designing hotel lobbies. Elevators Except for one- and two-story motels, every
hotel and motel will use elevators to take guests from the point at which they have checked in up
to the floor where the guest's room is located. Elevators should be located so that they are
immediately visible, either from the entrance of the hotel or from the check-in or registration
area. Another consideration in the planning of elevators is that of their location on the guestroom floors. It is advisable to place them centrally so that the distance walked by a guest in any
direction is reduced to a minimum. It would obviously be wrong to place the elevators at the end
of a long corridor. It would be far better to have these elevators placed so that they are about
midway between the two ends of the guest-room corridor. The number, size, and speed of the
required elevators is best determined by the elevator companies themselves. It would not be wise
for the architect to make a determination as to these factors.

Administrative Area The administration of a hotel operation de-pends entirely upon its size . A
small hotel will most likely have an office for a manager, who may have his secretary working in
the same room with him. The door to his office faces the public lobby, and an additional door is
pro-vided so that he can go from his office to the front desk . This is the simplest operation and is
found only in the smaller hotels . A larger, medium-sized hotel will have a manager and an
assistant manager and, as a rule, there will be e reception office where one or two typistreceptionists will be acting as a buffer between the public and the manager. As a hotel project
grows larger, the administrative area grows more complex. Aside from the manager and the
assistant manager, there may be an office for a food and beverage manager and a banquet
manager. A larger hotel, with sizable conven-tion facilities, will also have an office for the
convention manager and his assistants . Obvi-ously, es the complexity of thi office and
administrative area grows, a more careful and detailed study is, perforce, made to arrange e
smoothly functioning suite of administrative offices together with secretarial pools, bookkeepers, teletype machines, a mailroom for incoming mail and for voluminous outgoing mail,
etc. The accompanying illustrations show how these areas have been handled in various hotels .
It must be borne in mind that this front of the house works closely with the back of the house.
Many of the people in the administrative area will deal with guests as well as hotel cus-tomers
seeking to arrange for luncheons, banquets, and conventions . Accessibility to the public,
therefore, is of the utmost importance . Restaurant Facilities Every hotel, whether it has 50 rooms
or 2,000, must consider the feeding of guests . Small hotels may get by with a pleasant coffee
shop restaurant . This type of unit is becoming more popular in the smaller hotel where feeding
facilities are kept to a minimum. Such a facility would be the type where quick coffee shop
service could be offered a guest, either at a counter or at a table, and where, within the same
apace, more leisurely dining could be provided .

Elevators Except for one- and two-story motels, every hotel and motel will use elevators to take
guests from the point at which they have checked in up to the floor where the guest's room is
located . Elevators should be located so that they are immediately visible, either from the
entrance of the hotel or from the check-in or registration area . Another consid-eration in the
planning of elevators is that of their location on the guest-room floors . It is advisable to place
them centrally so that the distance walked by a guest in any direction is reduced to a minimum. It
would obviously be wrong to place the elevators at the end of a long corridor. It would be far
better to have these elevators placed so that they are about midway between the two ends of the
guest-room corridor . The number, size, and speed of the required elevators is best determined by
the elevator companies themselves . It would not be wise for the architect to make a determination as to these factors . Elevator companies can give the answers when facts and figures are
given to them, and it is they who will inform the architect what the number and size as well as
the speed of the elevators should be . Most elevator companies are computerizing this
information and can furnish it to the architect within a matter of hours.

Guest-Floor Corridors We will now accompany our guest from the elevator to the guest's room .
As the elevator doors open, the guest should find himself in an eras which can be designated as
an ele-vator foyer . This may be a large open space or a space slightly wider then the corridor
itself . Whatever its size, it should, by its width, denote the fact that it is the elevator foyer. It is
wise to remember that no guest-room doors should be placed opposite the elevators . Guests
coming or going late at night, coming out or getting into the elevators, may talk loudly or may be
too noisy, in which case they would be disturbing guests whose doors open off this area . The
foyer should be further demarked from the guest-room corridor by its decor and lighting . It is
always a thoughtful touch to have certain appurtenances which indicate consideration for the
guest in the total overall planning . One of these appurtenances would be a small bench or some
type of seat for guests who may want to wait in the foyer for the elevator or who may be waiting
to meet someone else on the floor . It is also a thought-ful gesture to have a full-length mirror in
this area ; men as well as women guests appreciate the chance to have a look at themselves
before descending to the main lobby floor . There should obviously be a good-sized ash receiver
for cigarettes, cigars, and other trash nui-sances that the guest may want to get rid of before
getting into the elevator.

Guest Rooms Everything that has been said about hotels thus far may be considered peripheral to
the prime product that a hotel has to offer, namely, the guest rooms . This is the final product that
is to be sold . In connection with this thought, it is well to remember (although this may not have
any influence on the planning or the archi-tecture of a hotel) that, unlike an item on a merchant's
shelf, a guest room that is not sold one night means a complete loss . It would be as if a grocer
were forced to throw out each day's unsold supply of boxed cereal and to lay in a fresh supply
every morning . That is a pre-cise analogy to the situation of the hotel man and his guest rooms .
The room that is not sold and the revenue that is lost can never be re-covered (Fig . 5) . Now let
us have a look at the guest room itself . The first consideration is that of size . The accompanying
illustrations of guest rooms in hotels designed by the authors show as wide a variety of
dimensions as an architect may encounter . For the moment, let us eliminate the space taken by a
bathroom and a closet and consider the actual room itself . The length and width are determined
by the amount of furniture that is to go into the room and by the degree of luxury that the hotel
operator wishes to achieve . Let us consider the latter first . It is an obvious truism that the luxury
of space is an expensive one when considered in the light of construction costs . Space, however, does convey a feeling of luxury and, where an operator is aiming for the high-priced
market, it would be well to create rooms that are sized not for the actual furniture require-ments
but for the sheer luxury of spaciousness.
Every hotel should have arrangements for suites of a permanent nature as opposed to a
combination of a studio room with a typical guest room . Suites will be furnished like fine sitting

rooms. They are used not only by the affluent traveler because he can afford it but also by
travelers who do a good deal of enter-taining, especially business travelers who entertain clients
and customers on their arrival in any given city . If a hotel offers convention facilities, it will
require an inordinate number of suites . Conventions will mean that there will be a good deal of
entertaining going on, and companies whose representatives are guests in the hotel will want
good-sized suites for fairly large cocktail parties and other forms of entertainment. These large
suites, incidental-ly, may double at times as seminar or confer-ence rooms. In this context the
hotel may be asked to move most of the furniture out of the suite living room and bring in
seminar chairs for meetings . If such will be the case, the plan-ner should provide for a storage
room on each floor capable of holding alternate types of furniture to suit the requirements of
guests using large suite-sitting rooms. These suites are also often used by two couples or by a
large family, in which case the sitting room of the suite may be used for sleeping at night . In this
case, dual sleep pieces will be required, but they will usually be the type that is referred to as a
"davenport," or the type of sofa which opens out to become a comfortable double bed (never as
comfortable as a true bed).
There are times when suites are not used, and the hotel should be able to rent each of the rooms
in the suite separately . This means that each room will have its own separate key. A foyer which
connects the bedrooms and the sitting area makes this separate keying of rooms possible . A
single door or a pair of doors leading to the foyer of the suite will be on one key, but by opening
these doors tem-porarily (the plans should be devised so that the doors can be swung back and
out of the way), the foyer becomes part of the corridors and each room, including the sitting
room, would have its own key. This makes for maxi-mum flexibility, so that the sitting room can
be rented on an individual basis. A complete bath-room should be planned for each of the sitting
rooms of a suite to make it possible to rent the rooms out singly . Even if the room is not rented
singly, a bathroom or lavatory facility certainly is needed in each living room or sitting room of a
suite . Plumbing connections might well be arranged so that a bar can also be introduced in the
sitting room . Since this room will be used for entertaining (either busi-ness or private), a bar
with water connection becomes a pleasant adjunct.

Guest Bathrooms We are now ready to review the bathroom requirements in a hotel . The
minimum bath-room will have a combination tub-shower, a lavatory, and a water closet . Since
the travel-ing public is very conscious of bathroom accommodations, the architect should give a
good deal of thought to this feature in the hotel . The accompanying plans of the writer's projects show various arrangements of bathroom accommodations . An innovation devised by the
writer's firm was the introduction of two lavatories in the bathroom facilities . These two
lavatories may be right in the bathroom itself, they may be pulled out into a dressing area, or one
lavatory may be placed in the bath-room and another outside the bathroom . This last
arrangement is most desirable, so that if two people occupy a room, regardless of whether it is a
husband and wife, two men, or two women traveling together, they have the use of the bathroom

facilities without inter-fering with each other. It immediately becomes obvious that if, for
instance, the husband is shaving, the wife can be taking a bath or shower-and other possibilities
are immediate-ly self-evident . European hotels invariably have not only the tub, water closet,
and lavatory but also a bidet . This is a particularly European custom, and we are finding that in
many hotels in Amer-ica the bidet is being introduced . Obviously, this additional feature is
found only in the most luxurious hotels . Taking the water closet as the first of the fixtures in the
bathroom, there is one word of caution. A noisy flushing toilet is a disturbing noise element not
only to the occupants of the room but also to the oc-cupants of the adjoining rooms.
Flushometers are not desirable because they are noisy. There are noiseless flushometers, but they
are quite expensive . The average hotel uses a silent tank-type of toilet as the most expedient type
of water closet for hotels . A wall-hung unit makes cleaning of hotel bathrooms easier for the
maid, but again, its economics will determine whether this fairly expensive type of installa-tion
is warranted . The tub in a guest room is normally a 5-ft tub. A good hotel installation will go for
the additional expense and the additional dimension by installing 5-ft 6-in . tuba . The European
hotels invariably have at least a 5-ft 6-in . tub, and there are many luxury hotels with 6-ft tubs .
The normal shower head becomes standard in all hotels, although there is a growing tendency to
using the so-called "telephone shower head ." This is a hand-operated shower head which is
more common in Europe than it is in America . Manufacturers of bathroom equipment have
devised a hand-held shower head which operates as well as the normal wall shower head, and by
using two movable shower-head supports, one at the nor-mal hand level and one at the higher
level where a fixed shower head normally would occur, the guest has the option of allowing the
hand-type shower head to remain in a standard position or to remove it and use it as he pleases.
This type of shower head, incidentally, is also convenient for women guests washing their hair.

Banqueting Facilities Most hotels and motels include meeting and banquet facilities . The
smaller hotels may provide only a number of meeting rooms which may also be used for
luncheons and dinners. Larger hotels will have a more diversified arrangement for meetings,
luncheons, dinners, and banquets . The largest hotels are usually designed with a full banqueting
and convention facility . The extent of these facilities will be determined by the hotel operator
who, in turn, will convey his requirements to the architect . It is wise for the architect to have a
thorough knowledge of what the feeding and space requirements for these facilities are. The
normal meeting room requirements are rather simple . The rooms will vary in size to
accommodate anywhere from 10 to as many as 100 people . In most instances, wherever it is
feasible, the meeting rooms will be ar-ranged in a straight line, so that the walls separating one
room from the other can be made movable. Movable, separating walls make it possible to
achieve a greet flexibility in the size of the rooms to accommodate meet-ings of various sizes .
Thus, if two meeting rooms which normally might seat 25 people are thrown open to one, we
would have a meet-ing room to take 50 people ; and if another wall is opened, we would be able
to seat 75 people, and so on . The numbers used are not necessarily those that will be found in

hotels, they are merely used for convenience, es an example. In larger rooms, which normally
qualify for conventions or large banquets, it is also possible to subdivide the space by the use of
movable walls to create smaller rooms when a large room is not required . A large space which
might seat 1,000 people when all folding wells have been moved back can be cut up into
anywhere from four to six spaces, allowing for meeting rooms that can accom-modate 150 to 250
people . In many instances both arrangements will be found in a hotel, so that there are lines of
meeting rooms of a smaller nature, all subdivisible, and a really large space that is also
subdivisible.