Imperial Hotel (Tokyo)
The Imperial Hotel ( Japanese 帝国ホ テ ル , Teikoku hoteru ) is a hotel in Tokyo that is currently in the third generation in the same location at Hibiya Park .
The first Imperial Hotel
In 1887 the Meiji government decided to build a first-class western-style hotel in Tokyo. The Japanese Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru (1835–1915) and representatives of the Imperial Court Office met to clarify the details. The politician Ōkuma Shigenobu and the entrepreneur Shibusawa Eiichi were among the people who supported the project.
A property of 25,000 square feet was leased directly on the road east of Hibiya Park for 60 years. 260,000 yen were required as capital, which was not a small sum at the time. The Imperial Court Office became the largest donor. The original plans for the new hotel were drawn up by the German architects Böckmann and Ende , who were in Japan at the time and built for the government. But when the foundations were laid, the clients were dissatisfied and commissioned the architect Watanabe Yuzuru to continue the construction and modify the plans.
Watanabe had studied with Josiah Conder in Tokyo and continued his education in Germany. When Watanabe took over the construction, the basic parts had already been completed, so that he had to follow the original plans to a large extent and could not change much in the architectural decoration. Although Watanabe was responsible for the completion, this first Imperial Hotel can essentially be viewed as a Böckmann-Ende construction.
The hotel was a stone / wood building, two-story with a loft, with the rooms on the first and second floors having spacious verandas. There were stables for 24 wagons and 40 horses. Inside there were 60 guest rooms, dining rooms, billiards and reading rooms. The main dining room was 20 × 15 m and also served as a ballroom.
Hotel on November 3, 1890, on the birthday of opened Meiji - Tennō . The hotel quickly became Tokyo’s social hub. Prince Itō Hirobumi dined there regularly.
The hotel enjoyed reputation from the start, but the hotel business was slow to develop. In the early years, an average of only 14 people stayed overnight. But especially after the USA annexed the Philippines in 1902, more foreign guests came. The Japanese-Russian war also brought visitors. In 1902 the German Emil Flaig took over the management from his predecessor M. Yokoyama. Flaig led the hotel into the profit zone and was rewarded in early 1906 with six months of paid home leave. In Germany he suffered a heart attack and died on August 19, 1906.
At the beginning of 1906 Karl Flaig was hired as a representative for his brother, who supervised the construction of an annex and took care of the further modernization. Karl, born 1865, but died in Tokyo in 1907, his grave is in the Aoyama cemetery .
This first Imperial Hotel remained in operation while the Wright Building was built next door. But on April 16, 1922, the first Imperial burned down due to negligence. Since the fire broke out in the late afternoon and there were enough personnel on hand, there were no injuries.
The 2nd Imperial Hotel (Frank Lloyd Wright Building)
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Difficult start and the earthquake
In 1915 it was decided to replace the Imperial Hotel with a new building, thinking of Frank Lloyd Wright as the architect. A delegation traveled to Taliesin ( Wisconsin ) and held talks with him.
After delays, it was decided in 1917 to finally put the idea of a new building into practice, according to the plans Wright had been preparing since 1915. Wright then appeared himself for deliberations in Japan. He brought Antonin Raymond with him to assist him.
The construction was carried out as a combination of brick and natural stone. As a natural stone, Wright used the hellenya stone , a light tuff stone that was easy to work with and so could be used for free ornamentation. A few hundred stonemasons were busy with the work.
The big crisis came in 1921. Ōkura Kihachirō (1837–1928), chairman of the board of directors, passed on his urge to reduce costs and conjured Wright, z. For example, doing without the water basin in front of the entrance would save 40,000 yen. But Wright was adamant. Finally, the capital was doubled to 6 million yen, the basin and more could be built. After the situation had consolidated, Wright returned to the USA, where he noted in his autobiography how many people accompanied him to the ship in Yokohama .
On July 4, 1922, the first part of the new hotel was opened with a reception, which for the former comrades of Admiral Uryū Sotokichi at the Annapolis Naval Academy along with Edwin Denby , at the time US Secretary of the Navy was given (Navy Minister) . The Imperial was then completely finished after nine months and opened on September 1, 1923, just hours before the Great Kanto earthquake .
The earthquake on the day of the opening proved the quality of the building concept, but also of the hotel staff. Baron Ōkura sent a telegram to Wright stating: “Hotel stands undamaged as monument of your genius. Hundreds of homeless provided by perfectly maintained service. Congratulations. ”Wright passed the telegram that made it appear that his hotel was the only building in the center of town that survived the earthquake.
But of course it wasn't like that. So was z. For example, the Upper House Club, which was built by Josiah Conder in 1883 as the " Rokumeikan ", remained standing, as was the Bank of Japan , built by Conder's student Tatsuno Kingo .
The hotel
The new hotel was not a closed block, but consisted of many wings connected to one another. The main wing, in which the guest rooms were located, were about 160 m long and only three stories high. However, some parts of the building rose to a height that corresponded to seven floors. The accommodation options ranged from single rooms to spacious suites with a total capacity of 500 guests.
The mixture of natural stone and brick was evident everywhere (light yellow outside, dark brown inside). The building bore Wright's signature both inside and out, right down to the ornamental detail. The lighting in the halls was indirect, which gave them the feel of a cathedral.
In order to satisfy social needs and entertainment, Wright had envisaged a number of options. There was the grill room, there were private dining rooms, there was the banquet hall, there was the theater with 775 seats. The location of these rooms was chosen with care and accessible via a separate entrance on the north side so as not to disturb the overnight guests.
The popular grill room had an orchestra stage and a dance floor. The most conspicuous room, the banquet promenade, also known as "Pfauen-Allee", was decorated with carpets from Beijing and had armchairs on both sides. The largest room in the hotel could hold 1500 people for receptions or 1000 people for dinner. And it could be turned into a ballroom where 150 couples could dance at the same time.
Wright did not forget about the hotel business either: the kitchen was laid out within the hotel so that all dining rooms were easily accessible. Wright had taken advice from Inumaru Tetsuzo, who also had experience abroad and who then became manager of the hotel after the opening.
War and post-war period
In the 1930s, the hotel began planning for the Tokyo Olympics in 1940 . They wanted to add a wing and increase the number of rooms from 280 to 500. The cost was estimated at 4 million yen and construction should begin in 1937. But then the Sino-Japanese War began , which culminated in the Pacific War , and preparations came to a standstill. During the war, the hotel was able to continue operating as it was never badly damaged during the entire period.
From 1945 until the end of the occupation in 1952, the hotel was confiscated by the Americans. After it was returned, it resumed operations. Business was good, the hotel was expanded by two buildings in 1954 and 1958, but then it was decided to completely replace it with a new building. For this new building, the Wright Building was closed on November 15, 1967 and torn down despite protests. Only the entrance area and part of the lobby, which is used as a café and which, together with the pond in front of it, was rebuilt in Meiji Mura , have been preserved.
"Pfauen-Allee"
Great Hall
Guest room
View of the guest wing
Entrance area (now in the Meiji Mura Museum)
The Imperial Hotel today
The extensions to the Wright building have also disappeared. They were:
- the "First New Wing" (Annex) Completion 1954, demolition 1980,
- the "Second New Wing" (east wing), completed in 1958, demolished in 1980.
Today still stand:
- the “New Main Building” ( 35 ° 40 ′ 20.5 ″ N , 139 ° 45 ′ 30 ″ E, ), completed in 1970, 17 floors above of the earth, 3 stories underground, 772 guest rooms, in place of the Wright building,
- the “Imperial Tower” ( 35 ° 40 ′ 19 ″ N , 139 ° 45 ′ 34 ″ E ), completed in 1983, 31 floors above ground, 4 floors below ground, 361 guest rooms, at the location of the “new wing”.
Wright is reminiscent of a bar in the main building on the first floor, which is kept in typical Wright style.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Fox, Dennis: The Imperial - Tokyo's Hotel With a History - Part I. Japan Times, 1986.
- ↑ Meiji Portraits: Flaig
- ^ Wright, Frank Lloyd: An Autobiography. 2nd ed., New York, 1943.
- ^ Fox, Dennis: The Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Imperial - Part II. Japan Times, 1986.
Remarks
- ↑ Wright was not in Japan for the first time: In 1905 he had traveled through the country and had started collecting Japanese woodblock prints, about which he published a short article in 1912. In 1923, however, he had to sell his collection for lack of money.
- ↑ Raymond then stayed in Japan and gained his own reputation as an architect.
- ↑ Ōkura was later dedicated to a statue in the hotel garden.
literature
- James, Cary: The Imperial Hotel . Tuttle Verlag, Rutland (Vermont) and Tokyo, 1968.