The Hotel Chatham is the home of the best people and many Americans annually seek its hospitality. The Harpers, for instance, members of the great publishing house, are among its regular guests. The present proprietor is M. H. Holzschuch, son of the late owner, under whom the house acquired its wide fame. Hotel Chatham is at 17 and 19 rue Daunou, between rue de la Paix and Boulevard des Capucines.
Everybody in Paris knows the Hotel Binda, and it is known by a great many people who have never been in Paris. With New Yorkers the house is a favorite because it is kept by Mr. Charles Binda who for years was manager of Delmonico’s, and this settles at once and satisfactorily the important question of _cuisine_. The house was opened in 1878. It is solidly built of stone, five stories high, and is an imposing structure. It stands in rue de l’Echelle, on a corner of the avenue de l’Opéra, the principal business street of Paris, and probably the handsomest shopping street in the world. It is most conveniently located for the principal places of interest--the Grand Opera, Palais Royal, the Louvre galleries, etc. One minute’s walk brings you to the rue de Rivoli, that wide open street, one side of which is flanked by the open and beautiful gardens of the Tuileries.
If in the heat of a summer day in walking to Place Vendome or to the Champs Élysées, you wish to avoid sunny rue de Rivoli, shade is at your very door in the narrow but picturesque rue St. Honoré, which, with its little shops, its hotels, old churches, etc., is a feature of outdoor life in Paris.
The Grand Opera is at the other end of the Avenue de l’Opéra, a short walk. But omnibuses pass the door, by which you can reach any part of Paris at the expense of a few sous. And, for that matter, it is only a thirty-cent cab fare to the Grand Opera, to the offices of the American Minister, Whitelaw Reid, in Avenue Hoche, or to the Anglo-American Bank on the corner of Chaussée d’Antin and rue Meyerbeer. _Cocher_ will go fast enough if by the course and slow enough (too slow) if by the hour.
Instead of a courtyard such as many hotels in Paris have, and which in some cases are useless, the space on the ground floor is used by the Binda for a grand, glass-enclosed reception and reading-room, beautifully lighted by day and by night. There is also a grand drawing-room and a smoking-room, which unlike the dingy rooms turned over to the use of men in some English hotels is, in the Binda, a very bright and attractive apartment.