Dining Room - The One That got Away

This picture, the only true color photograph of the main Dining Room that I've ever seen, was offered for sale on eBay a few years ago. Foolishly, I didn't buy it. But I did grab this lo-res copy.

The Memorial Presbyterian Church on Olive Avenue in West Palm Beach, was built entirely from the bricks of the hotel after it was demolished in 1936. It appears that much of the woodwork, windows and ornamentation came from the hotel as well.

Historians Debi Murray and Richard Marconi note that the floor of the church came from the ballroom. The dining room doubled as a ballroom when the events required more space than the octagonal ballroom could provide. 

The long dining room carpet has been rolled up to make way for the waltz.

The Dining Room, Appetizer

After a second wing was added in 1902, the main dining room was capable of serving 1700 guests at once. The Head Waiter had thirty-two assistants and five hundred waiters who served meals to from twenty-three hundred to twenty six hundred people three times a day.  150 cooks and an equal number of assistants worked in the kitchen. Guests looking for a more intimate meal could always have it at the Palm Grill.

This rare photo- taken shortly after the hotel opened- shows waitresses and other staff  lining the center aisle of  the dining room. The ladies are wearing dark shirtwaist dresses and full length aprons. This is one of a very few pictures of the hotel staff in existence. 

A heavily retouched photograph of the dining as it looked when it opened in 1894. The main aisle where the staff is standing in the top photo is just past the arches at the right. 

The picture is taken from a rare angle that almost gives a "diner's eye view" of the table. It includes lots of great detail; from the water carafe, glasses, napkins and condiment servers to the arrangement of the silver and design of the chairs. Click to enlarge.

 The Hotel's print shop produced thousands of menus every day topped with an elegant engraving of the hotel logo.

A colored postcard gives a hint of a later color scheme.  The arched doorway  at the entrance found a second life as a garage door at a Palm Beach home after the hotel was demolished.

The dining room doubled as a ballroom when parties featuring upwards of two thousand guests couldn't be accommodated by the octagonal ballroom.

Strictly Ballroom

This rare view of the Ballroom (Florida Historical Society collection) shows the entrance (center) as you enter from the top of the stairs in the Rotunda. Looking west, down the entrance hall you can see the center front entrance door of the hotel (bottom, viewed from the outside.) In the picture below (courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County) the steps are partially obscured by what appears to be the same plant.  

 

The doors were framed with leaded  glass. A piece of wicker furniture is visible just inside the doorway. Note the cuspidors scattered around the room- a measure to keep the grass-green carpets clean.

  

 In the top picture, the Ballroom (more here) is decorated with Japanese lanterns- a very popular motif of the day. Flagler's hotels staged three important balls every season: The New Year's, George Washington Birthday and St. Patrick's Day Ball.

Eventually the parties got so large they were moved into the massive dining room (below.)