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Abstract
From the late nineteenth century on, hotels became vertical cities, constantly mixing a personal, illusive sphere with sheer anonymity. In the hotel lobby, a fleeting place-for-passing-through, the muzak never stopped while, day in and day out, new guests got their room number at the front desk. Only those sitting in the lobby chairs, the so-called “lobby lizards,” could form pockets of resistance. While their direct surrounding morphed into a whirlpool of ephemeral events, they were frozen in what seemed to be an endless moment of waiting. Besides that, their habitat, the lobby interior, often was made up of diverse historical building styles. How did the lobby lizards perceive the co-existence of all these types of time? And which regimes of temporality did the hotel management install in the lobby? Were historical wall paintings an option or were timetables indicating the arrival and departure of trains far more essential? By analyzing the memoirs, novels and diaries of lobby lizards, this article offers an answer. It demonstrates how multifarious temporal narratives were produced in the lobby interior and how they could intersect.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. That is how in Richard Sennett’s seminal The Fall of Public Man people in semi-public spaces were described (Sennett Citation1977: 99).
2. The term “lobby lizard” first pops up in nineteenth-century American jurisdiction, to denote “non-guests not seeking accommodations or service.” See on that: Sherry (Citation1993: 456). After a while, the term started to designate persons who entered the lobby to gaze at famous people staying in the hotel. It became a popular term within “hotel slang” (Cornyn Citation1939: 239–240). Most recently, the term has been used for comfort-seeking hotel visitors in general. For example: Gaynair (Citation2008).
3. See on that: Matthias (Citation2006: 38–43).
4. (Roth Citation1956: 234).
5. (Roth Citation2000: 102).
6. With the term “control revolution,” the sociologist James Beniger described the increasing measuring and registration of information between 1870 and 1920 (Beniger Citation1986).
7. (Vehling Citation1910: 17)
8. “Van onze correspondent” in: Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, July 3 Citation1920, evening edition
9. This was how the Australian literary theorist Robbie Moore described Edith Wharton’s idea about time in the hotel (Moore Citation2012: 272).
10. Quoted in: (Meade Citation1987: 129).
11. This term was coined in: (Sayeau Citation2010: 281–282).
12. This point is made in Bishop (Citation2013: 135–149).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rajesh Heynickx
Rajesh Heynickx (1977) is an Associate Professor of architectural theory at the University of Leuven (Department of Architecture). He also teaches art history at the University of Antwerp (History Department). He edited the following studies with Leuven University Press: in 2012 (together with Tom Avermaete) Making a New World. Architecture and Communities in Interwar Europe and (together with Thomas Coomans e.a.) Loci Sacri. Understanding Sacred Places ; in 2010 (together with Jan De Maeyer) The Maritain Factor. Taking religion into Interwar Modernism.