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.
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