Many Mansions

Many Mansions is a memoir about what it was like to grow up in a luxury hotel-The Robert Treat in Newark, New Jersey. From 1935 and 1945 my family lived in the management suite there while my father, Lloyd Robinson, was Vice President and General Manager. Many Mansions is not just about the achievements of one man, however. There's a much bigger story here about a highly diverse community of employees and managers determined to build a successful business through teamwork and dedication at a time when our entire nation was faced with two simultaneous calamities-the Great Depression and World War II. Written from the point of view of someone who had daily encounters with employees at all levels of the hotel staff, Many Mansions is basically a collection of short anecdotes and personal essays illustrated with both private family and archived public-domain photographs. Though organized chronologically, each chapter title focuses on a unique topic, such as "Hotel amenities-then and now" or "Jimmy the carpenter" or "Table manners" or "The disappearing sailor." To make the historical context come alive, every anecdote and essay is linked to one or more photographs of some significant person, place or event in the greater Newark area during the 1930s and 1940s. Included, for instance, will be newspaper photos of such well-known personalities of the time as Dutch Schultz, such iconic landmarks as "The Wars of America" monument in Military Park, or such important civic events as the opening of The Lincoln Tunnel in 1937. The appendix of Many Mansions includes a timeline of key historical events during the years 1935 through 1945, a numbered list of figures cited in the book, and a bibliography of the primary and secondary sources used in researching this book. Also included in the appendix are two published autobiographical accounts by the author's father and by a relative of the Aronson family who befriended Albert Einstein when he and his wife stayed at the Robert Treat after escaping to America from Nazi Germany in 1933. Although Many Mansions is non-fiction, it has much in common with such fictional works as Kay Thompson's Eloise at The Plaza (1955); Arthur Hailey's Hotel (Doubleday, 1965); and Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Random House, 2009).