"Central" is a Riga hotel of the late XIX - early XX century. It was located where the building of the Latvian Radio is currently towering ( Dome Square , 8).
| hotel | |
| Central | |
|---|---|
| A country | |
| Location | |
| Key dates | |
| 1880s - construction 1913 - demolition | |
| Status | does not exist |
History
Before the First World War, among 28 Riga hotels, Central occupied the third place after the incomparable St. Petersburg and the fashionable Rome .
The hotel building at 25 Shkunyu Street was built in the early 1880s by order of the owners of the Kunzendorf family. The place for the construction of the hotel was perfectly suited, since next door, on the contrary, there was a Krepsha confectionery and wine restaurant, and on the side of the building there was a landenberg haberdashery, which could not but have a positive impression on the guests.
The hotel building was distinguished by its spectacular appearance: luxurious decor on the facade, eclectic forms with a predominance of non-bar components with some interspersed neoclassicism, bilingual advertising of the hotel's advantages in Russian and French. A small number of rooms (only 20) suggested the highest level of customer service, since with such a programmed “minimum”, each guest was able to develop an individual approach, which eventually took shape in a peculiar policy of the hotel owners. Having chosen this particular hotel, he could enjoy all the benefits of civilization: a spacious bathroom, a telephone and an exclusive breakfast at that time in an individual restaurant (each room had a restaurant).
According to the terms of the city hotel charter, such individual restaurants in Tsentrali could work until three in the morning, while the restaurant of the St. Petersburg hotel could receive visitors up to 2 hours, and the well-known Otto Schwartz restaurant, which took on the color of Riga Entrepreneurship, worked in general only up to 12 hours. First-class restaurants, to which all three of these institutions belonged, could work up to 22 hours, and the later the restaurant was open to the public, the more fashionable it was considered. Hotel rooms were also affordable: a day at the Central Hotel could cost a guest from 60 kopecks to 4 rubles, while rooms at the St. Petersburg and Rome hotels cost at least 10 rubles, which also affected the influx of visitors to the "Central".
In 1910, in a series of tinted postcards issued in the UK, the Central Hotel featured complete with the First City German Theater (the building of the modern National Opera ) and the Reuters House . Images of urban objects under moonlight on tinted postcards have since become a photographic exclusive that is of particular value to collectors.
In 1912, the Kunzendorf family decided to sell the land, yielding to the entreaties of the First Commercial Bank, the building for which was planned to be built on the site of the Central Hotel. The sales act took place at the end of 1912, and the next year, in 1913, the central office of the First Commercial Bank was built, which lasted until 1936.
Links
- Ilya Dimenstein . Conversations about Riga.