It must be considered alone, and not in the company of lesser and
more modern eating places.

John Reed says that the "Old Martin" was the real link between the old
Village and the new, since it was the cradle of artistic life in New
York. Bohemians, he declared, first foregathered there _as_ Bohemians,
and the beginnings of what has become America's Latin Quarter and Soho
there first saw the light of day--or rather the lights of midnight.

Jean Baptiste Martin who had been running a hotel in Panama during the
first excavations there--made by the French, as you may or may not
remember--came to New York in 1883. He had been here the year before
for a time and had decided the city needed a French hotel. He arrived
on the 25th of June, and on the 26th he bought the hotel! He chose a
house on University Place--No. 17--a little _pension_ kept by one
Eugene Larru, and from time to time bought the adjoining houses and
built extensions until he had made it the building we see today. He
called it the Hotel de Panama.

But it was not as the Hotel de Panama that it won its unique place in
the hearts of New Yorkers. "In 1886," Mr. Martin says, "I decided to
change the name of my place. 'Panama' gave people a bad impression.
They associated it with fever and Spaniards, and neither were popular!
So it became the Hotel Martin. Then, when I started another restaurant
at Twenty-sixth Street, the 'Old Martin' became the Lafayette."

The artists and writers came to the Hotel Martin to invite their
respective Muses inspired by Mr. Martin's excellent food and drink.
From the bachelors' quarters on the nearby square--the Benedick and
other studio houses--shabby, ambitious young men came in droves. Mr.
Martin remembers "Bob" Chambers, and some young newspaper men from the
_World_--Goddard, Manson and others. From uptown the great foreigners
came down--some of them stayed there, indeed. In 1889, approximately,
it started its biggest boom, and it went on steadily. Ask either Mr.
Martin or its present proprietor, Mr. Raymond Orteig, and he will tell
you, and truthfully, that it has never flagged, that "boom." The place
is as popular as ever, because, in a changing world, a changing era
and a signally changing town, it--does not change.

It was to the Hotel Martin that the famous singers came--Jean and
Edouard de Reszke and Pol Plancon and Melba; the French statesman,
Jules Cambon, used to come, and Maurice Grau--then the manager of the
Met