Benjamin Chambers writes:
One of the sweeter pleasures of paging through the Complete New Yorker is looking at the dated advertising, especially when a copywriter describes, with a flourish of trumpets, amenities we regard as either standard or puzzling.
For example, if you’d been looking for a quiet, upscale hotel in 1958, you’d have done well to choose The Tuscany on 39th Street. I know, because I came across an ad for it while reading a sweet-but-forgettable memoir by Grover Amen in the June 14 issue of that year. (I’ve displayed the ad here for your viewing convenience, much as The Tuscany’s staff would have turned down your bed at night.)
How could you beat a hotel that was the first in the world to have color TVs in every room? Plus, each room had FM and AC, and every guest could count on finding a phone extension in the bathroom: all items at least as breathtaking, apparently, as its rates.
So what else would you get for your money? A “catnap throw†(pillow), butler’s pantry (a small staging area in which to store plates, glassware, and silverware), and a “silent valet†(a rack on which to hang your clothes).
All part of a strategy, it would appear, to net readers of The New Yorker who wanted class, but who were new to travel. These small details imply that prospective guests will be waited on by their own staff of quiet, liveried servants. After all, if one’s room has a “butler’s pantry,†the butler it belongs to has to be there to count the silver, right?
Ah, innocence! Gone now, though I see hotels still advertise silent valets, so maybe we’re still suckers for promises of elegance. But the romance of travel has definitely waned. These days, hotels simply hand over the keys to the mini-bar and don’t even pretend that a genteel staff member will be there to serve you the contents.
Whither The Tuscany? The hotel is still extant, it appears, appropriately upgraded and still advertising a “chenille throw” fifty years later. Imagine all the people who’ve passed through there since (many no doubt loyal readers of The New Yorker).
O, if only those valets could speak!
