
The University of New Mexico
NEWS RELEASE
Contact : Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920
cgonzal@unm.edu
Nov. 29, 2007
UNM History Prof Has Book Reviewed in NY Times Book Review
Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, assistant professor of history in the University of New Mexico College of Arts and Sciences, has published “Hotel: An American History,” by Yale University Press, 2007. It will be featured among titles in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.
It has already been featured in the “Economist,” http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10170480 and on Slate.com. http://www.slate.com/id/2178062/.
Through his research, Sandoval-Strausz learned that hotels are an American creation.
“I thought they were European because of their architecture and because of European hospitality, but I found it wasn’t so. Hotels as places of transience and centers of public life began in the United States,” he said.
He notes that the hotel form began in the 1790s. “That generation of hotels went bankrupt, so people didn’t build them. In fact, the first backer of hotels ended up in debtors prison,” he said.
Between the 1820s and 30s, hotels become economically viable and many sprang up along the eastern seaboard in New York, Boston, Baltimore, D.C. and Philadelphia, he said.
Sandoval-Strausz, on faculty at UNM since 2001, said that the idea to study the history of hotels for his dissertation came to him while sitting in Chicago's Palmer House Hotel lobby. Thinking lots of books must have been published about hotels, he was surprised to find very few.
He turned to archival collections at the New York and Massachusetts historical societies, the Huntington Library and even UNM’s Center for Southwest Research. “They have a great collection of ‘Harpers Weekly.’ I got many of my images from them,” Sandoval-Strausz said.
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