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Ormond Beach, Florida, 1894. "The Ormond." At its peak, Henry Flagler's Hotel Ormond was reputed to be the largest wooden structure in the United States, with 400 rooms connected by 11 miles of corridors and breezeways. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative by William Henry Jackson. View full size.
Look through the pictures that Vonderhees linked (thank you); you will see that the kitchen (and boiler I'd guess) are in a separate, masonry building, and throughout the hotel, there are sprinklers.
The neatest part is that in the ballrooms--I'd presume in the older, nicer sections of the hotel--they are built into the plasterwork. If it had been a 1960s or 1970s retrofit, those pipes would likely have been visible. So I'm guessing that from the start, or soon thereafter, somebody knew what he was doing and took safety seriously.
Didn't burn?? How did this get past the Shorpy censors??
Here's a link to a great site that has numerous pictures of the Hotel Ormond in 1992 before it was demolished.
http://www.historic-structures.com/fl/ormond_beach/ormond_hotel.php
What a beautiful and gracious building.
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