2 Daly 15 | New York Court of Common Pleas | 1867
This is an application for an injunction to restrain the Croton Aqueduct Board from cutting off the Croton water from a large building at the corner of Frankfort and William streets, owned by the plaintiff, which is used as a cheap lodging-house.
The ordinance of the city corporation, establishing the rate of water rents, provides that hotels and boarding houses shall, in addition to the regular rate for private families, be charged for each lodging room, at the discretion of the Croton Aqueduct Board. The Board, upon the assumption that the plaintiff’s building is a hotel, have imposed an additional tax of $180 annually. The plaintiff insists that it is not a hotel, and has refused to pay the additional tax, in consequence of which the Board have notified him that they will, if it is not paid, cut off the Croton water from the building; and the present application is to stay them from carrying that resolution into effect.
It appears that the building is a large structure of eight stories, each story consisting of lodging rooms, adapted to the use of one person only, and above the basement it is used exclusively as a lodging-house; that the rooms are very small, being from four to six feet wide and eight feet long; that they are intended for poor people, being let at the small rate of twenty-five cents per night, and the water used in each room does not exceed, upon an average, a pint a day, whereas the rooms in ordinary hotels are four times as large, can be occupied by four times as many persons, and the water used in such rooms is ten times greater; that there is not a sufficient supply of Croton water above the first floor; that four-fifths of the time it does not rise above that floor; that between seven o’clock in the morning and six in the evening there is no supply above the basement, and it could not he obtained between these hours for the use of the floors above, unless it was carried up from the floor below, at a great expenditure of time and labor; that the water for the supply of the rooms, and for cleaning and ordinary use, above the second floor, is supplied by a huge tank, which the plaintiff has caused to be erected at his own expense in the attic, into which the rain-water flows that falls upon the roof; that there is no cooking for guests, the house above the
This being the character of the building and of the uses to which it is applied, the question presented, and the only one discussed upon the motion, is whether it is a “hotel;” a question the solution of which depends upon the meaning of that term.
Ordinarily, in a legal inquiry, it is sufficient to refer to some approved lexicographer to ascertain the precise meaning of a word. But this is a word of wide application, and as the meaning which is to be attached to it in this country, has been the subject of much discussion upon the argument, it may be well to refer to its origin and past history, as one of the means of determining its exact signification. The word is of French origin, being derived from hostel, and more remotely from the Latin word hospes, a word having a double signification, as it was used by the Romans both to denote a stranger who lodges at the house of another, as well as the master of a house who entertains travelers or guests. Among the Romans it was a universal custom for the wealthier classes to extend the hospitality of their house, not only to their friends and connections when they came to a city, but to respectable travelers generally. They had inns, but they were kept by slaves, and were places of resort for the lower orders, or for the accommodation of such travelers as were not in a condition to claim the hospitality of the better classes. On either side of the spacious mansions of the wealthy patricians were smaller apartments, known as the hospitium, or place for the entertainment of strangers, and the word hospes was a term to designate the owner of such a mansion, as well as the guest whom he received (Andrew’s Lex.)
In such a state of things there could be little traveling, and «consequently the few inns to be found were rather dens to which robbers resorted to carouse and divide their spoils, than places for the entertainment of travelers (Historie des Hotelleries, ■Cabarets, &c., par Michel et Fournier, Paris, 1851, p. 181). The effect of a condition of society like this was to make hospitality not only a social virtue but a religious duty, and in the monasteries, and in all the great religious establishments, provision was made for the gratuitous entertainment of wayfarers and travelers. Either a separate building, or an apartment within the monastery, was devoted exclusively to _this purpose, which was in charge of an officer called the hostler, who received the traveler and conducted him to this apartment, which was fitted up with beds, where he was allowed to tarry for two .days, and to have his meals in the refectory, while, if he journeyed upon horseback, provender was provided by the hostler-for his beast in the stables (Fosbroke’s Monachism, 238, 3d ed.; Davies, 2, 769). In many countries this apartment, or guest hall, of a monastery retained the original Latin name of hosjpitium, but in France the word was blended with bosses and changed into-hospice, and it afterward underwent another change. As civilization advanced, and the nobility of France deserted their strong castles for spacious and costly residences in the towns, they erected their mansions upon a scale sufficiently extensive to enable them to discharge this great duty of hospitality, as is still, or was very recently, the custom among the nobility and wealthier classes in Russia, and in some of the northern countries of Europe. Borrowing, by analogy, from an existing word, and to distinguish it from the guest house of the monastery, every such great house or mansion was called a hostel, and by the mutation and attrition to which these words
The word, though so long in use in France, is of comparatively recent introduction into the English language. The Saxon word i/nn, was employed to denote a house where strangers or guests were entertained, down to the time of the Borman invasion; and, under the Borman rule, it was, in the popular tongue, the word for th¿ town houses in which great men resided when they were in attendance on court, several of which became afterward legal colleges, under the well known titles of inns of court (Pearce, 50). In all legal proceedings, however, and wherever the Borman French was spoken, the word hostel was the term for all such establishments. The places where entertainment could be procured for a compensation, to distinguish them from the inns, or ¡great houses, where it was furnished gratuitously, were called in English common inns; while in Borman French, by a change analogous to that which had occurred in France, they were called first hostelleries, and
It appears from a note of Malone, referred to in Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, that the word hotel came into use in England by the general introduction in London, after 1760, of the kind of establishment that was then common in Paris, called an Mtel garni, a large house, in which furnished apartments were let by the day, week, or month. In Barclay’s Dictionary, 1872, in the first edition of Walker, 1791, and in Sheridan’s Dictionary, 1795, hotel is given as the proper pronunciation of hostel, an inn; and in the dictionaries of Jones, 1798, and of Perry, 1805, it is incorporated as an English word, and is defined in the latter to be “ an inn, having elegant lodgings and accommodations for gentlemen and genteel families.” Todd, 1814, defines it to be “ a lodging-house for the accommodation of occasional lodgers, who are supplied with apartments hired by the night or week.” The definition given by Knowles, 1835, is simply “ a lodging-house.” By Smart, 1836, “ a lodging-house or inn.” Beid, 1845, “ an inn or a lodging-house.” Boag, 1848, “ an inn; ” and by Dr. Latham, in his edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, “ an inn of a superior kind.”
The word was introduced into this country about' 1797. Before that time houses for the entertainment of travelers in this city were at first called inns, and afterward taverns and coffee-houses. In 1794, an association, organized upon the principle of a tontine, erected in Wall street what was then a very superior house for the accommodation of travelers, called the Ton-tine Coffee-house; the success of which led to the formation of
It is to be deduced from the origin and history of the word, and the exposition that has been given of it by English and American lexicographers, that a hotel, in this country, is what in France was known as a Jiotelerie, and in England as a common inn of that superior class usually found in cities and large towns. A common inn is defined by Bacon to be a house for
In the above-mentioned case of Thompson v. Lacy, the defendant kept a house in London called the Globe Tavern and
It follows from these authorities, that an inn is a house | where all who conduct themselves properly, and who are able I and ready to pay for their entertainment, are received, if there j is accommodation for them, and who, without any stipulated $ engagement as to the dm-ation of their stay, or as to the rate
In Smith v. Scott (9 Bing. 14; 2 Moo. & S. 35), it was held that a woman who kept a house without any public sign, in London, in which she let rooms to families or single men for long or short periods, and, if required, found cooked provisions for them, upon which she charged a small profit, receiving her orders usually every Monday and her payment at the end of the week—th*e house being open at all hours to any person who came—was a hotel-keeper, within the meaning of the Bankrupt Act of 6 Greo. IV., ch. 16, § 2, which enumerates “ vietualers, keepers of inns, taverns, hotels, and coffee-houses,” as among the classes of persons who may be declared bankrupt. O. J. Tindall put the decision upon the ground that some distinction must have been intended, as the word which immediately precedes hotel in the act is inn, and that it could scarcely have been intended to designate the same thing by both words. He was of opinion that hotel was not used in the sense of the old word
I have discussed the meaning of this word closely, for the reason that it is an embarrassing question whether the building owned by the plaintiff is, or is not, a hotel. As contradistinguished from a boarding-house, it is public in its character, being open to all comers, and two of the principal wants supplied by an inn, lodging and meals, can be obtained there; but not under any general arrangement,- as the restaurant is kept by one person and the lodging-house by another. The proprietor of the restaurant does not engage to provide lodgings for those who come to his restaurant for entertainment, and the keeper of the lodging-house lets out his rooms for twenty-five cents a night, without any stipulation, express or implied, to furnish those who take them with meals. Each is independent of and has no control over the other, and neither, in his separate capacity, could be regarded as the keeper of an inn, liable to that extraordinary responsibility for the safe keeping of the property of guests, which the law imposes upon that class of bailees. If the cases to which I have reference (Parkhurst v. Lansing, 1, Salk. 387, and Doe v. Lansing, 4 Gamp. 76), were correctly determined, it is not an inn, and in the best view I can take of it, though the point is not free from doubt, it is not that kind of house, for the general reception of travelers, which in this country is known as a hotel.