If you can't take the heat...

Apparently the electrical system at my apartment building couldn't. I can't fathom why, but it took them all week to fix it. This means the building had to pay for all of the residents to stay in hotels. Which, in my case, meant a four-star hotel nearby that is probably one of the fancier places I've ever stayed. It's a French hotel and the lobby is full of people speaking French. Some other unique features:
-a piece of modern art over the bed with its own light
-a bathroom as big as the bedroom in my last apartment with separate shower and tub
-42" flat-screen television
-feather bed with what I'm guessing are at least 500 thread count sheets
-bottle of Evian delivered every evening

I was wondering if Philly had ever had any similar hotels in the past, and I found two contenders. First is the La Pierre, which was only 2 blocks from here and opened in 1853. As for hosting foreign guests, it sounds like they went to the United States Hotel in the middle of the 19th century. Any earlier than that century and no matter who you were, you were probably sleeping in a tavern; as the chapter on hotels in a late-19th century book on Philadelphia history notes, "In olden times, such a thing as the modern hotel, with its fashionably-dressed and all-important clerk, its vast smoking-room, carpeted parlors, gilt mouldings, and other luxurious appointments, was unknown." In this heat, I'd give up all the fanciness just for the air conditioning.