Work of Art by Sinclair Lewis

The Westward Ho! to the eyes of Myron Weagle, was a palace. The Westward, as its habitués called it, had 650 bedrooms, and in 1905 was one of the largest six hotels in the world. It was new, built in 1900, and had the benefit not only of Byzantine, Moorish, and Gothic architecture, but also of the room-telephones, elevators and telautographs of America.

Before Myron reported to Mark Elphinstone--the offices of the whole Elphinstone chain were in the Westward--he stopped to adore the facade of the new cathedral in which he was to serve altar. There were fifteen stories of brown sandstone, pleasingly diversified with balconies, grey marble plaques, and small pink marble pillars, all rising to minarets of corroded green copper and huge Moorish brick turrets shaped like hexagonal pears. The building's glory was its main entrance: the golden archway above authentic red porphyry pilasters from Syria, shadowed by the carriage-awning of glass and gilded iron. The lobby, inside, was two stories high, floored with pink marble, wainscoted with yellow marble, supported with pillars of marble pink and yellow and green and black. Above the wainscoting was a frieze (painted by one of the best firms of commercial painters in New York) showing the development of New York from the Dutch, through the English, Irish, and Jews, to the Italians: a fine and lively incitement to American patriotism. The elevator doors were of bronze--rather like the doors of St. Peter's in miniature. The café and bar-room at one side of the lobby was lined with green marble, and full of tapestries, silver medallions, carved oak cabinets, carved ivory chessmen under glass, a carved oak ceiling, onyx-topped tables, teak tables, Flemish oak tables, English oak tables, French iron tables from the boulevards, sporting prints, a gilded harp draped with a silken scarf, a portrait of Mark Elphinstone draped with a Shriner's sash, a photograph of Oscar of the Waldorf inscribed 'To my friend M.E. ', tufted leather chairs, curved oak chairs, gilded bamboo chairs, and lights--a glory and miracle of lights--ceiling-clusters of lights, lights peeping out of mauve glass lilies, lights in a large horseshoe formation on the wall, lights and lights and lights behind the glassware that upreared like fairy stalagmites behind the bar.