Hotel Vendome is built.

Architect: William Preston. Designed in the French Second Empire style, the white, marble-clad building is located at 160 Commonwealth Avenue. It becomes the first building lit by electricity in the U.S. in 1882.* An addition by Ober & Rand in 1881 makes it the largest hotel in the city. Guests include presidents Grant and Cleveland, members of the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt families, P.T. Barnum, Sarah Bernhardt, Admiral Perry, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Oscar Wilde. The hotel closes on June 1, 1970. The building is heavily damaged by a fire in 1972,* and converted to a residential building by Stahl / Bennett in 1975.*