Cesar's Cities

Persons of fashion use a strange adjective for the things which they consider as belonging properly to their environment; such things they call "smart." Less polished people use an adjective which is far more descriptive of smart things: they use the word "ritzy." The word is from the proper noun, Ritz; Ritz is the name of the smartest chain of hotels in the world.

There are not very many of them--nineteen--and they are generally full.* Moreover, Ritz hotels are only built in fashionable cities, in cities where there are likely to be many visitors who are capable of appreciating the finer social distinctions.

Boston, for example, now has a Ritz. Berlin has no Ritz, never has had a Ritz, and, probably, never will have a Ritz. For Berlin, the Adlon, a handsome and comfortable hotel, is sufficiently regal.

The U. S., a less civilized unit than the continent of Europe, has isolated districts in which urbanity and good manners are important. Manhattan is one such; it has a Ritz. Boston and Philadelphia--these two have been given a Ritz. Atlantic City is flashy, yet is permitted a Ritz. Last week it became known that one other city in the U. S. would achieve this monumental seal on its civic success. There was some doubt, however, which city this would be, that would outclass Berlin and cast shame on Tokyo. It might be Chicago. It might more probably be Los Angeles.

Other chambers of commerce might indeed come clamoring for a Ritz in their town. Knowing the principles of the founder of the Ritz Hotels, well-informed observers were sure such demands would be snubbed promptly and with proper severity.

The founder of the Ritz Hotels did not choose that curious monosyllable by chance; Ritz was his last name; his first, splendidly enough, was Cesar. The son of a Swiss farmer, his first skirmish among European hostelries occurred when he opened a restaurant in Baden-Baden, the Kurhaus. He boasted that he never forgot a face. But the eclat which attached itself to his restaurant requires a more complete explanation. Cesar Ritz read faces as well as remembering them; he was an instinctive & selective snob, one of those likeable snobs whose hauteur is inherent; he did not consciously single out his richer patrons for special attention. Nonetheless it was the epicures who remembered him, and the princes and the millionaires. Other people were a little frightened by M. Ritz, even intimidated by his martial cognomen or his last name that sounded sharp and hard.

When a man has owned a smart restaurant for a few years he has enough friends to run a hotel. Cesar Ritz bought the Minerva, in Baden Baden, and carried on the tradition of his Kurhaus. Later he bought more hotels and titled people stayed in them. Cesar knew them all by name. When he opened the Carlton in London, he gave an elaborate banquet. The guests were all titled, with the exception of a few very rich Americans; one of these was a banker to whom M. Ritz extended, gratis, all the facilities of his new hotel before its formal opening because the banker had been recommended to him by an old friend in the U. S.

Cesar Ritz died 15 years ago. His widow now runs the Paris Ritz in the bar of which countless roustabouts have spent their leisure hours. Charlie Ritz, the one of Cesar's two sons now living, has little of his father's interest in the hotel business, though it was last week rumored that he intends soon to share with his mother the management of the Ritz in Paris. An affable fellow, his mustache is waxed and he does not quite justify the magnificence of his last name.

The history of the Ritz Hotels in America is concerned less with Cesar than with his ablest lieutenant, Albert Keller. Large, red, round and genial, Mr. Keller went to the London Ritz when it opened about 19 years ago. Before that he had worked in hotels all over Europe; had even at the very first been a kitchen apprentice in the National Hotel at Geneva, which is now the Palace of the League of Nations. He was made manager of the New York Ritz when it opened in 1910. Every since he has directed the policy of this hotel and its U. S. companions.

Last week, to Mr. Keller, there came a new promotion. The directors of the Manhattan Ritz elected him to succeed Duncan G. Harris as president of the New York Company of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Corporation. The directors who elected Mr. Keller to his new eminence were, without exception, gentlemen of ritzy appearance; all are listed in the Social Register; three of them were: George McAneny (architecture), Frank Presbrey (advertising) and Whitney Warren (architecture). The chairman of the board of directors is perhaps the most socially elect among their number. He is Robert Walton Goelet, who belongs to 19 clubs and who owns the ground upon which the Manhattan Ritz is built. It seems somehow typical of Cesar Ritz's enterprise that even the earth upon which his pompous monuments are raised should be hallowed by socially correct ownership.

It was chiefly upon Mr. Keller that the choice of the next Ritz city devolved. Chicago or Los Angeles? Last week he had not decided between them.

*There are Ritz hotels at: London (2); Paris (1); Mentone (1); Evian (2); Rome (2); Papallo (1); Lake Maggiore (1); Naples (1); Lucerne (1); Buenos Aires (1); Montreal (1); New York (2); Atlantic City (1); Boston (1); Philadelphia (1).