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Hotels were{{U}} (31) {{/U}}the earliest facilities{{U}} (32) {{/U}}bound the United States together. They were both creatures and creators of communities, as{{U}} (33) {{/U}}as symptoms of the frenetic quest for communities. {{U}}(34) {{/U}}in the first part of the nineteenth century, Americans were already forming the{{U}} (35) {{/U}}of gathering from all corners of the nation for both public and{{U}} (36) {{/U}}business and pleasure purposes. Conventions were the new occasions, and hotels were distinctively American facilities{{U}} (37) {{/U}}conventions possible. The first national convention of a major party to choose a{{U}} (38) {{/U}}for President (that of the Clay for President) was held in Baltimore, at a hotel that was then reputed to be the best in the country. The presence in Baltimore{{U}} (39) {{/U}}Barnum's City Hotel, a six-storey building with two hundred apartments, helps explain{{U}} (40) {{/U}}many other early national political conventions were held there.
In the long run, too, American hotels made other. national conventions not only possible{{U}} (41) {{/U}} pleasant. The growing custom of regularly assembling{{U}} (42) {{/U}}afar the representatives of all kinds of groups — not only for political conventions, but also for commercial, professional, learned, and avocational{{U}} (43) {{/U}}—in{{U}} (44) {{/U}}supported the multiplying hotels. By mid-twentieth century, conventions accounted{{U}} (45) {{/U}}over a third of the yearly room occupancy of all{{U}} (46) {{/U}}in the nation, about eighteen thousand different conventions were held annually{{U}} (47) {{/U}}a total attendance of about ten million persons.
Nineteenth-century American hotelkeepers, {{U}}(48) {{/U}}were no longer the genial, deferential "hosts" of the eighteenth-century European inn, became leading citizens. Holding a large stake in the community, they exercised power to make{{U}} (49) {{/U}}prosper. As owners or managers of the local "palace of the public", they were makers and shapers of a principal community attraction. Travelers from{{U}} (50) {{/U}}were mildly shocked by this high social position.
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