Those Hotel Keys Did More Than Just Open the Door
In 1891, Edwin W. Hall of Whitehall, New York, went to the U.S. Patent Office on a mission to stop hotel guests from stealing hotel room keys. His answer was a baseball sized attachment big enough to, as his patent describes, make it "improbable that the guest will inadvertently carry off the key," while remaining, importantly, "ornamental." And with the stroke of a pen, the inconvenience of one hotel owner created one of the most aesthetically pleasing and successful hospitality experiences to date.
Old hotel keys are notorious for feeling absurdly glamorous in the hand. Late nineteenth-century brass keys survive in museum collections to this day thanks to the enduring quality of the material they were designed with. The iconic Stevens Hotel in Chicago was known in part for its emblematic key fob whose rearing lion decorative designs matched its door handles. What a brilliant and creative idea at the time to give room numbers on hotel keys a little architecture of their own. Brass was the perfect material for this because it took to engraving well, could be handled easily by people, and after enough time, it would earn a patina that signaled to others how popular the hotel was. This even became a way for staff to know which rooms needed to be cleaned, where vacancies were, and doubled as a backup property management system. Even more, it created a sense of rapport and opportunity for genuine hospitality between the establishment and its guests. You had to come back to reception to drop off your room key and pick it back up. You would hand over your key before lunch and ask for it back after dinner. Within just a few days, the desk clerk would know your face, your name, your tendencies, and how to better recommend or tailor your experience for the utmost pleasure.
Wes Anderson understood the romance hidden in the experience as well as the intentional design that makes it feel as rewarding as it looks. You can't have one without the other and still feel this sense of being swept off your feet. Each ingredient plays an important role and unlocks the potential of the others. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, Monsieur Gustave speaks of the "faint glimmers of civilization" still left in the world, as he conducts his routine procedures with monastic devotion. His entire method is the insistence that " slow" rituals like the poem, the L'air de Panache, and that perfectly kept ledger of his are the true proof of a civilization; one that only survives because someone bothered to perform it. The old key fobs with their brass emblems and tassels are the portable versions of the argument. An argument that if you slow down a bit, take the time for good conversation, enjoy the details, your experiences can feel far more indulgent than they appear to be on paper.
We Removed the Friction, Then We Tried to Put It Back.
Contrast that with the hotel key card we see today. An achievement of modern engineering for safety and convenience. It removes significant friction from the check-in process and costs much less for hotels to implement, on paper, it looks like true progress. The cost to that progress becomes an optional front desk experience and a lack of commitment to the guest however. When we remove those slow, endearing rituals, that can be an inconvenience in some lights, we're forced to spend considerable energy and resources to create new reasons for people to linger a while.
These old ornate brass keys were organizers, operating signals, social prompts, advertising material, and tiny pieces of architecture designed to enrich the lives of both the guest and the hotel. Though they've been phased out, even at the highest levels of hospitality, some of the most committed to a magical experience are trying to reintroduce some of that lost friction. It's in the staff who intercept you in the lobby, the person with a tablet who walks up to you to check you in, the handwritten notes left in the room; all of it to reconstruct the fob's functions without the fob itself. Which sounds like a very expensive way of saying you admitting you were wrong without making an announcement out of it.
The hotel keys and artifacts featured in this story reflect the history of hotel design and hospitality. Images courtesy of the public domain. This story is part of Residence Supply’s Power of Imagination campaign
