Trendsetter der Moderne: Restaurants, Cafes, Hotels

Cafes, restaurants, and hotels are at the core of the impact of modernity, establishing a new layer between the urban public and private sphere. With these places of taste and leisure, new and specific architectural forms were promoted, creating the perfect setting for the public performance and image cultivation of urbanites in the emerging metropolises of the world. Standing at the heart of many urban myths, cafes are celebrated as intangible sacred halls where works of art have been produced, revolutions plotted, lives made, and hearts broken. Cafes serve as background to public display and sociability-in short as a means of cultural and economic exchange. The novel reading of the history of the hotel on the other hand offers new insight into the context of social performance, the structural reflections of class differences in the building type of the hotel, and of the development of tourism with its urbanization of former natural landscapes. Paris heralded the emergence of a third type of urban institution, the restaurant. Since then these places have become a stock constituent of urban scenery and life all over the world.
As a product of the modern metropolis, the restaurant is an essentially modern invention, combining inspiration and craftsmanship, as well as knowledge in a scientific and cultural sense. By linking the development of three distinct settings of urban life and analyzing the very specific architectural as well as urban spaces that helped forming the modern metropolis, Franziska Bollerey provides surprising new perspectives in a well-informed tour d'horizon-which is, above all, a true pleasure to read. *The first synopsis of the role of cafes, restaurants, and hotels as manifestations of the process of civilization *A well-written, thoroughly researched, and abundantly illustrated book providing a richly-faceted view of an important part of Western cultural history