Hotel St. George -- Brooklyn History
1907 postcard of fireplace in the lobby. Hotel St. George, Brooklyn

Read Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7 of this story.

Captain William Tumbridge was a true self-made man. Unlike many of his fellow “captains of industry”, Captain Tumbridge was the real deal; an English-born veteran of the US Navy, who fought in the Civil War, and later, was the captain of his own ships, which sailed the seas around the world. His early life story is told in Part One.

When he finally settled down in Brooklyn, he decided to build and run the largest and finest hotel in the world. He situated his establishment in Brooklyn Heights, and named it the Hotel St. George, after a tavern that once stood on the same location.

The hotel opened in 1885, and it was a grand and immediate success. It was so successful, that in the space of the next fifteen years, he would keep building new wings, until by the turn of the 20th century; there were over 1,000 rooms in the hotel.

Although he left the running of the day to day hotel business to a manager, Tumbridge kept a hands-on approach to his guests and the hotel. He picked the menus for the restaurant, and was generally on-site to both glad-hand and trouble shoot. Tumbridge wanted to run a first class swanky hotel, but somehow, he seemed too often attract the attention that was more reminiscent of a shore leave in a seedy, and dangerous port on the Barbary Coast.

In 1886, only a year into his operations, the Brooklyn Eagle reports that one of his waiters, one Max Bernstein, was arrested for clocking another waiter, named Alfred Bert, with a wine bottle. The charges were dropped when Bert didn’t show up for the arraignment to press charges.

And it wasn’t only the staff that was free with swinging at people. Tumbridge himself got in trouble several times for taking care of business with his fists. More on that, in a moment.

I have to back up to talk about the hotel. Today, we tend to think of hotels as transient places where we spend a night or a week. The Hotel St. George was that kind of hotel, but it was also a residential hotel, where rooms or entire suites were lived in by singles, couples, or families, there for a much longer stay, or as their primary residence.

This was the clientele that was most important to Tumbridge and his staff. From day one, the hotel advertised itself as a residence to upscale boarders, offering them the best in accommodations and amenities.

Ironically, this was a time when well-to-do people would have nothing to do with most of the new apartment buildings going up, even those built for their upscale patronage, as they didn’t want to live in multiple dwellings on top of strangers. Yet they had no problem doing so in a residential hotel, which was essentially, the same thing.

The new luxury apartment buildings had residential staff, the same, if not better furnishings and room amenities, as well as fine dining in rooms available only to residents and their guests. It was all a matter of perception, and promenading out of your suite in a fine hotel is far grander even than promenading from one’s luxury flat.

In 1886, after the completion of the third addition to the hotel, which connected all three buildings that stretched the length of the block between Clark and Pineapple, the Eagle waxed eloquent about the fine amenities that awaited guests.

The grand main lobby was encrusted with marble and tile mosaics, with the walls and ceilings golden bronze. The hotel office was there, with safe deposit boxes for the guests, prominently displayed to show their security. Captain Tumbridge’s office was right behind this office, where he could oversee everything, and be available for guests. The lobby led to a large ladies’ parlor, decorated, as the Eagle says, “with wealth and taste.” Following that was an enormous dining room, with a blue painted ceiling, lots of columns and huge French plate glass mirrors on every wall, and rich carpeting on the floor. The dining room could seat several hundred, and the hotel’s kitchens could also prepare food for room service for one, or for a gathering, complete with servers and other staff.

The suites for long term guests were in two, three, or four rooms each, each with a private bathroom, a lavish amenity for the day. The rooms were heated with steam heat, but also had fireplaces in case a guest wanted more heat, or the ambiance of a fire. The rooms were lit with electricity, with a gas back-up, just in case. They still didn’t trust the reliability of electricity in those days, but it was an amenity that guests demanded, and they got it.

The electricity actually was a sore point for the relationships between the hotel and its residential neighbors, even as early as 1886. The St. George generated its own electricity from steam powered dynamos located in the basement of the Hicks Street side of the hotel. Local residents complained that the dynamos vibrated so much that it disturbed their rest, and was detrimental to their health. They asked for an injunction to prevent the hotel from using them. A judge sent volunteers to stay in that wing of the hotel, and they pronounced that they felt no harsh vibrations and no noise. The court used a mercury test, which showed no movement on the surface, when the equipment was on at full strength. The injunction was lifted. The neighbors did not give up, and the Eagle ran stories for another year, as injunction after injunction was filed in order to stop the dynamos, followed by a law suit brought by a Mrs. Louisa M. Yocum, and some of her Hicks street neighbors. They lost, the dynamos continued to produce more and more electricity as the hotel grew and kept adding additions.

In 1888, the newlywed couple of Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair McKelway held two wedding receptions at the hotel. This was the first wedding reception mentioned in the Eagle, and it would certainly not be the last. The happy couple moved into the hotel as residents. More receptions and parties would soon follow. The hotel was a complete and well running success, freeing Captain Tumbridge to take care of some other business.

In 1888, the Captain won a lawsuit against a Mr. Ed Stokes, the rather shady owner of a very popular men-about-town watering hole and pool establishment called Hoffman House, in lower Manhattan. Stokes had to pay Tumbridge over $20,000 for rents and damages owed on a piece of property on Beaver Street. Tumbridge was leaning on the fence of said property on a June day, right after the judgment, and Stokes came along, cursing Tumbridge out. According to the Eagle, he told Tumbridge, “I see you have ‘done’ us again. But you can bet your bottom dollar that a ——– ——– like you will never see a cent.” Tumbridge just laughed and twirled his moustache, and told Stokes to watch his mouth. Stokes called him another name, maligning Tumbridge’s ancestry, and then threatened to have him arrested for perjury. Now the good Captain was angry.

He called Stokes a “hound”, and Stokes, who had taken boxing while incarcerated at Sing Sing, began the fisticuffs, hitting Tumbridge in the nose, right behind the ear, and right above his eye. Tumbridge, who probably was no stranger to a brawl, got a few in as well, although he came out the worst for the battle. Separated by passers-by, Stokes escaped into the crowd, and the Captain came home to clean up and call his lawyer. He opined to reporters that Stokes had killed another rival, and would have drawn a pistol and killed him, had he not put a choke hold on him. The Captain also related that Stokes was much bigger and taller, and had taken boxing from a fellow Sing Sing inmate, and that he, the Captain, was a much slighter man, and had been sick recently. He was under a doctor’s care, and was going to sue.

Captain Tumbridge kept his lawyer, Brewster Kissam, quite busy. He didn’t suffer fools lightly, and he didn’t like people who messed around with his money. He was quite hot tempered, and although he had lost the physical fight with Ed Stokes, he didn’t lose the legal battles. He also would sue others. That same year, later in 1888, Tumbridge sued a stockbroker named Benjamin Barnard. Before his hotel career, Tumbridge had been in stocks with a now dead partner, and Barnard was his customer. Tumbridge stated that when he had gotten out of the stock business, he had settled up with all of his clients, but Barnard disagreed, and said that Tumbridge still owed him a lot of money. He wrote a letter stating that if Tumbridge did not pay him what he wanted, he would release another letter to the newspapers, telling them all about Tumbridge’s past, revealing things he wouldn’t want to be known about the now famous proprietor of the Hotel St. George. Tumbridge sued for blackmail, and a judge agreed, and another case was pending.

In January of 1889, Captain Tumbridge got great news in court. His case against Ed Stokes was settled, with the arrival of a substantial check from Mr. Stokes. That same day, the courts handed down another indictment against Benjamin Bernard for trying to blackmail the Captain. It was a very good day. GMAP

The remainder of the Tumbridge years to follow, which ended at his death in 1921. The hotel was sold, more building took place, including Emory Roth’s St. George Tower annex in 1928, completing the complex, making it the largest hotel in the world. The famous indoor pool, the restaurants and banquet halls, and the Hotel St. George’s glory days would follow, still remembered by those of a certain generation who grew up in the city. The decline, the massive and devastating fire, and the hotel’s new position in Brooklyn Heights’ streetscape, all will be told on Walkabout.

1912 postcard

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