Tremont House (1829– c.1895), sometimes called the Tremont Hotel, was a hotel designed in 1829 by Isaiah Rogers in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

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. Notable guests included

Davy Crockett David Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was an American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He is often referred to in popular culture as the "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of ...

and

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

Description

The Tremont House was a four-story,

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

-faced, neoclassical building, located at the corner of Tremont and

Beacon Street Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and its western suburbs Brookline and Newton. It passes through many of Boston's central and western neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway–Kenmore, the Boston Uni ...

s, with its main entrance on Tremont. It incorporated many hotel "firsts": * Indoor

plumbing Plumbing is any system that conveys fluids for a wide range of applications. Plumbing uses pipes, valves, plumbing fixtures, tanks, and other apparatuses to convey fluids. Heating and cooling (HVAC), waste removal, and potable water delive ...

* Indoor

toilet A toilet is a piece of sanitary hardware that collects human urine and feces, and sometimes toilet paper, usually for disposal. Flush toilets use water, while dry or non-flush toilets do not. They can be designed for a sitting position popu ...

s and baths * Reception area * Locked rooms for the guest * Free soap * Bellboys Among this long list of innovations, it is probably best known as the first hotel with indoor plumbing and running water. The hotel's water was raised by steam-powered

pump A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic energy. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they ...

to a storage tank on its roof, where it fed by gravity to the taps. Eight water closets (toilets) were provided on the ground floor.

Bathroom A bathroom or washroom is a room, typically in a home or other residential building, that contains either a bathtub or a shower (or both). The inclusion of a wash basin is common. In some parts of the world e.g. India, a toilet is typically ...

s for bathing were located in the basement, and served by cold running water. Bathtubs were copper or tin, with local gas heating for the tub's water. Running water was also provided to the kitchen and laundry. A simple system removed the waste water to the sewage system. During the 19th century it was socially unacceptable for women to dine alone in the public rooms of hotels. The hotel was among the first urban establishments to open a women-only dining room, referred to as a ' Ladies' ordinary'. The Tremont House set the standard for luxury accommodations and was the model for many hotels built in major cities at this time. One of the most notable, also designed by Isaiah Rogers, was the Astor House (1836) in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

.''Hotel: An American History'' by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz Edition: illustrated Published by Yale University Press, 2007 ,

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References

Images

Image:TremontHouse ca1830s byJamesBennett Boston SimonsUPNE.png, Painting by James Bennett, c. 1830s Image:1860 TremontSt Boston LOC220008v.jpg, Tremont Street, 1860s; Tremont House at right, Park St. Church in distance Image:Tremont House, Boston, by Soule, John P., 1827-1904.jpg, 19th-century photo by

John P. Soule John Payson Soule (1828–1904) was a photographer and publisher in Boston, Massachusetts, and Seattle, Washington. Biography He was born in Phillips, Maine on October 19, 1828. His younger brother, William Stinson Soule, also became a photogr ...

Image:1894 Dickens room TremontHouse Bostonian1895 v1 no4.png, Room No.29, occupied by

and others. Image:1894 TremontHouse2 Bostonian1895 v1 no4.png, Interior, 1894 File:Tremont House menu.jpeg, Tremont House menu on June 21, 1857

Description

References

Images

Further reading