In Hotels to Remember, author and artist Mary Montague Sikes showcases twenty classic hotels—a tour of North American hostelries offering the pinnacle of hospitality, gracious décor, fine dining, R & R options, and fine art collections.

            Sikes’ name appears in the guest ledger of most of the hotels at least once, and in some instances, several times, making Hotels to Remember as much personal travel memoir as it is chronicle.  Drawing upon her photographic diaries of the visits, Sikes created an original hallmark pastel for each location.  The pastel, photographs, and narrative combine to delight, inform and inspire as it details the features and heritage that make each hotel in this book outstanding.            

             Americans have been a mobile population from our earliest days…probably owing to the fact the many came to the new world to take advantage of its spaciousness, but still found it desirable, and sometimes necessary to travel great distances and congregate.  Along the way, and at the destination, the need for a good meal, a rejuvenating bath and a comfortable bed made innkeepers out of sundry businessmen and planted the seeds for the modern hospitality industry.

In response to the traveling public’s desires, innkeepers set aside the European concept that luxuries and pampering were reserved for the nobility, and established accommodations available to all.  Innkeepers carefully noted which amenities garnered the most appreciation and, with the ingenuity typical in the new world, enhanced them so that the standards for guest comfort were raised higher and higher.   Hotels had become popular social centers even before the first Constitutional Congress, and the buildings that housed them served as cornerstones for our emerging cities--as much an emblem of our pioneer spirit as the Conestoga wagon.  New York City’s first skyscraper was a six-story hotel.  From Revolutionary times until the present day, fine hotels have been chosen to house the events and rituals that accentuate our lives—from summit meetings to senior proms to political banquets to academy awards presentations to wedding receptions to presidential campaign headquarters and more.     

            All the hotels in this volume are inextricably entwined with our heritage and our resilience as a people.  Some have hosted our founding fathers, some stood as outposts of civilization along the railroad’s push across our continent, witnessed the ravages of wars, both with foreign foes and among ourselves, endured fire, neglect and the effects of fickle economic times.  Yet these grand ladies endured, emerging again and again, polished and preened to welcome an array of guests ranging from the splurge of honeymooners to the icons of business, from routine-weary families to government leaders and visiting royalty.

             At every location in Hotels to Remember, a respect for its history and a reverence for art dominate the environment.  Many of the hotels have museum-worthy collections of paintings and sculpture, but unlike museums, the art has an accessible feel—it’s there to be lived with, to combine with the people and activities who have come to these grand hotels to meet, entertain, relax.