DIVISION SIX — BUSINESS. 



471 



one long to be remembered. At ten o'clock the great company bad nearly 

 all assembled, embracing about 1,500 guests." 



The hotel had a successful season ; and it has been regularly open from 

 autumn to spring, or during the tourist season, every year since. Numer- 

 ous additions and improvements were made in the building and the premises 

 year by year. 



DESTROYED BY FIRE. 



On Easter Sunday, April 14, 1895, in the afternoon, this great hotel 

 caught fire from some defective flue near the southwest corner on the upper 

 floor. There was a stiff sea breeze blowing from the southwest at the time, 

 which made the flames spread rapidly, and get such headway before dis- 

 covered, that the fire hose on the different floors were utterly powerless to 

 check the swift progress of the fire as it swept directly toward the remain- 

 ing part of the immense structure, its annex and power-house, etc. In less 

 than one hour everything was down in one vast heap of fiery ruin. The 

 loss, as given by the manager. Gen. Went worth, was $450,000 ; insurance, 

 $205,000. There were 165 guests in the house Saturday night, besides 

 about fifty employes in the annex. The buildings were all of wood, and 

 the flames spread so rapidly that many lost all their clothing and personal 

 effects ; but no lives were lost, and nobody seriously injured. The hotel 

 safe was dragged out the next day with grappling hooks and chains from 

 the red-hot mass of fiery glowing embers, and its contents found unharmed. 



, It is a remarkable coincidence that 



Williel Thomson, who surveyed the 

 hill for grading and set the stakes for 

 the foundation walls — Thomas Ban- 

 bury, who graded the hill down thirty- 

 four feet from its original summit — 

 O. J. Muchmore, who superintended 

 the erection of the hotel — and Frank 

 A. Haskell, who did the first job of 

 painting on it — all happened to witness 

 its flamy destruction ten years later. 

 Mr. Vroman of Pasadena happened 

 to be there taking a photo of a very 

 fine rose bush in the yard, when the 

 fire broke out — and then he took sev- 

 eral views of the great structure while 

 it was burning. 

 The Carlton Hotel. — This was the first attempt to establish at the 

 Pasadena business center a hotel to be furnished and conducted in a style 

 recognized as " first class." It was the first building in the city to have a 

 passenger elevator. The base of the iron column at west side of its stairway 



"Land^of Sunshine," May, 1895. 

 THE RAYMOND HOTEL ON FIRE. 



