Hotel Kid: A Times Square Childhood

By Stephen Lewis

Book Overview

"Funny, poignant, sad and wistful...This is a very fine book--about a person, and a city, growing up."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"This delightful yet poignant memoir is highly recommended for both public and academic libraries."--Library Journal (starred review)

"The charming Hotel Kid is as luxurious as the lobby in a five-star hotel."--San Francisco Chronicle

A Manhattan landmark for fifty years, the Taft in its heyday in the 1930s and '40s was the largest hotel in midtown, famed for the big band in its basement restaurant and the view of Times Square from its towers. As the son of the general manager, Stephen Lewis grew up in this legendary hotel, living with his parents and younger brother in a suite overlooking the Roxy Theater. His engaging memoir of his childhood captures the colorful, bustling atmosphere of the Taft, where his father, the best hotelman in New York, ruled a staff of Damon Runyonesque house dicks, chambermaids, bellmen, and waiters, who made sure that Stephen knew what to do with a swizzle stick by the time he was in the third grade.

The star of this memoir is Lewis's fast-talking, opinionated, imperious mother, who adapted so completely to hotel life that she rarely left the Taft. Evelyn Lewis rang the front desk when she wanted to make a telephone call, ordered all the family's meals from room service, and had her dresses sent over from Saks. During the Depression, the tough kids from Hell's Kitchen who went to grade school with Stephen marveled at the lavish spreads his mother offered her friends at lunch every day, and later even his wealthy classmates at Horace Mann-Lincoln were impressed by the limitless hot fudge sundaes available to the Lewis boys.

Lewis contrasts the fairy-tale luxury of his life inside the hotel with the gritty carnival spirit of his Times Square neighborhood, filled with the noise of trolleys, the smell of saloons, the dazzle of billboards and neon signs. In Hotel Kid, lovers of New York can visit the nightclubs and movie palaces of a vanished era and thread their way among the sightseers and hucksters, shoeshine boys and chorus girls who crowded the streets when Times Square really was the crossroads of the world.

"[T]his postcard from a vanished age nicely captures a special childhood rivaling Eloise's"--Kirkus Reviews

"Charming."--New York Times

"A colorful and nostalgic snapshot of a vanished era."--Bloomsbury Review

"Chockfull of history and wit, Stephen Lewis' account of his charming yet preposterous childhood spent in a suite at the Taft Hotel ordering from room service and playing games like elevator free fall is a five-star read. Hotel Kid pays tribute to an elegant time long ago that was very elegant and is very gone. It's a book we've been waiting for without realizing it: at long last, an Eloise for grown ups."--Madeleine Blais, author of Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1589880188
• ISBN13: 9781589880184
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Paul Dry Books
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

engaging account of a bygone era

If you've ever enjoyed old movies set in the glamourous world of New York in the 1940's, you'll love this book. The author's father was general manager of the legendary Taft Hotel in New York in the Big Band era of the 1930's & 1940's. The family lived in a suite in the hotel, were waited on by hotel staff & dined in its restaurants. The cover photo (of my hard-cover edition) shows them all dressed up in the hotel dining room - even the children are in suits - & his mother wearing a frilly collar & one of those Big Hats tilted rakishly over one eye. By the age of 12 Stephen had an encyclopaedic knowledge of food and wines but no idea of what normal home life or play was like for the rest of us. One example of the gaps of ignorance that would plague him through life occurs at age 40 when he marries and buys a house. The basement is full of extra windows, which his wife explains are "storm windows". "Are you crazy," he says, "there's no way I can get all this up in time before a storm". Ironically, with the ubiquitous thermal windows of today, the concept of "storm windows" will soon pass away from the ken of another generation. As he recalls some of the worldly advice given to him by his father, "take the swizzle stick out of your drink so that you don't poke yourself in the eye with it" was of little relevance to his own children -a problem that occurs, I suspect, with a great deal of inter-generational communication. "Hotel Kid" is an engaging account of a fascinating era that is gone forever.

Stephen Lewis Makes Old New York Come Alive Again...

I must say, "Hotel Kid" by Stephen Lewis, is the best book I have ever read, and his writing style is exquisite. I absolutely loved it and it has touched me deeply, in fact, moved me to tears. I miss the old Hotel Taft very much, as well as New York as it once was. So much has changed over the years and the things I held dear are now gone. Stephen Lewis makes old New York come vividly alive again. I first stayed at the Hotel Taft 33 years ago when I was 12 years old and it has held a special place in my heart ever since. I've stayed there many times since then, including a three week stay starting the day after I graduated from high school in 1978, after which I moved to New York. I loved the Taft back then, but I had no idea till now, after reading "Hotel Kid", how much more the Taft had to offer in it's hey day. I wish I could have experienced that time frame also, as it sounds even more spectacular than the era I was in. Thanks to Stephen Lewis, I can vividly picture and feel a sense of what it was like to be there. It breaks my heart to see the Taft butchered up into condos and the diminutive Michelangelo. Less than a year ago I was walking with a friend through Times Square and we stopped to rest. I was telling him about the Taft and I looked up at the street sign to see where we were in relation to where the Taft was and realized I had been leaning up against it the whole time. I hadn't even recognized it. Thank you Stephen Lewis for sharing so much and giving such an enlightening and fitting tribute to the much loved Taft.

Delicious fun

Stephen Lewis, a teacher of memoir-writing, was raised during the 30s in a NY hotel where his father worked as general manager. In this gently amusing memoir, he recreates the experience for us, his readers, ushering us into a world in which everything was provided to the family by the hotel and its purveyors. Bathroom supplies were mysteriously restocked; meals arrived by room service; beds were made and floors swept; clothing was ordered by phone and appeared in drawers and closets.Hotel Kid is a gentle and affectionate portrayal of New York's Time Square area as it once was, and of a very unusual childhood lived amid the then-splendor of the theater district. Very nice; an easy read.

How Suite it is.

Hotel Kid is the story of the Lewis Family and the hotel Mr. Lewis managed back in the golden days of Times Square. Living in a two room apartment might not have been that uncommon for many New York children but few of them also ate only room service or signed for snacks in the resturaunt in the lobby. It is an interesting tale about life in a gilded age now gone. More than just the logistics of Steven Lewis' life were uniqe. He was more than just a kid hanging around the hotel. He was the Crown Prince of place as well. The most telling parts of the book reveal how he came to understand the borrowed athority he possesed or how even a child he could make the adults nervous. When a strike at the hotel pits managment and staff against each other you see the conflicting loyalites of the author. Scion of the boss he was still a friend to many on the picket line. This book was an enjoyable read about a time so far away and yet not really that long ago. It was a quick read and well worth the time it took.

Better than a cold drink at the hotel bar on a steamyhot day

Lewis is the founder of a memoir writing workshop in New Mexico, and he follows his teachings and creates a sweet memoir that recreates a vanished Manhattan in the 1930s and 1940s, when he grew up in the now extinct Hotel Taft in midtown Manhattan. (I was cleaning out my closet while reading this book, and found a coat hanger from the Hotel Taft.) Reading his prose, you can feel the summer heat of Manhattan, the hot asphalt, the bright sunlight, and the cool large drinks offered at the hotel bar. His father was the general manager of the Taft Hotel for decades, at Seventh Avenue of West 50th Street (now a TGIF, Roy Rogers, and Michaelangelo hotel); and Stephen and his younger brother, Peter, played in the halls, ate at the grills, had their birthdays with the hotel's band leaders, and grew up in an environment where the porters and nannies were Irish and the elevators operators were Black. Outside was the depression, but inside the hotel, he, his brother and mother were royalty. Best parts... the real Barney Greengrass has a cameo; and while Stephen never became a Bar Mitzvah, his brother had one for the presents. The rabbi inveighed against the evils of Times Square, and the temptations a boy being raised in the neighborhood would face. The author's mother never returned to a synagogue, but his father did go to the Actor's Temple every Yom Kippur (where Toots Shor would always contribute a cool $2000). A great read for anyone who wants to be transported back to a different age (yet only 50 years ago)