The Back of the House, by John Dismukes Green. Gehring Publishing Company, NY, 1925.

Quarto, burgundy cloth covers with gilt lettering, 336 pages, index, many illustrations of bills, reports, menus, and other forms.

With the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan as a case study, this is basically a period how-to guide for hotel management. It was written by the hotel director, and prefaced by his mentor, George W. Sweeney, the owner.

The sections are on Banquet, Chef-Steward, Culinary, Steward, Food Control and Finance/Auditing.

The Commodore building, built in 1919 as part of the complex of large hotels around New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, stood at the current location of Grand Hyatt. The latter was Donald Trump’s first large project in Manhattan, and the architect designed Trump Tower not long after. The Hyatt covered and gutted the Commodore but preserved the ballroom, but the Hyatt building itself is slated for demolition, to be replaced with an office tower housing fewer hotel rooms.


Condition: Good. Interior clean, binding intact but frail in places. Hinge cracked between pages 127-128. Gilt bright, minor wear to corners and spine ends, minor age tanning to pages.