Archive for August 2008
sharp detail
Photograph by Chester Higgins Jr.
Put the cylinder into the slot, and the power comes on. Take out the cylinder on your way out, and the power goes off.
SEAN MacPHERSON, the New York hotelier, has been to Europe dozens of times. And he knows that across the Continent, many hotel rooms have master switches that help reduce power use.Usually, a guest inserts a card into a slot when entering the room to turn on the electricity. Removing the card (which doubles as the room key) on the way out the door shuts off the power….
At the Jane, the master switches are not controlled by key cards, which Mr. MacPherson said “seem impersonal and corporate.”“We wanted to do it in a more stylish way,” he added.
So Mr. MacPherson had a metal shop make small brass cylinders, which he attached to each of the Jane’s key chains. Place the cylinder into a slot near the door to your room, and the power goes on. Pull the cylinder out, and it goes off. Mr. MacPherson’s team rigged the switches, he said, from standard electrical parts.
As recently as two years ago, he said, guests might have been put off by the enforced conservation. Now, Mr. MacPherson said: “The world has shifted. If you do the right thing, people pick up on it.”
The New York Times. August 3. 2008
