1875 - Architecture, Real Estate

Architecture, Real Estate

New York's "Tweed" Courthouse is completed north of City Hall at a cost of $13 million. The estimate had been $250,000 but Boss Tweed's cronies have run up huge bills, including $179,729 for three tables and 40 chairs, nearly $361,000 for a month's work by a single, solitary carpenter.

Parliament passes the Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act. Also known as the Cross Act, it has been pushed through by home secretary Richard Assheton Cross and empowers municipalities to buy slum dwellings, demolish them, and replace them with suitable housing.

Bangkok's Oriental Hotel opens on the Chao Phya River.

A magnificent new Palmer House opens in Chicago to replace the hotel owned by merchant Potter Palmer that burned in the 1871 fire. The new hotel has a mammoth barbershop with silver dollars embedded in its floor and a lavish dining room with dishes that include broiled buffalo, antelope, bear, mountain sheep, boned quail in plumage, blackbirds, partridge, and other "ornamental dishes" (see 1925).

The United States Hotel opens at Saratoga Springs, New York, with nearly 1,000 rooms for the summer season. The new hotel calls itself the world's largest.

San Francisco's Palace Hotel opens October 2 with 755 20- by 20-foot rooms, 437 baths, five elevators, seven iron stairways, and a crystal roof over its inner court. Built on a wrought-iron skeleton, the new hotel is supplied with water from four artesian wells (see 1906).