Hotel Tivoli
Happy Friday, everybody! We hope you all have great weekend plans. However before you start your weekend, could you please help us learn more about this object?
Do you know what this tag was used for? Was it for packages or luggage? What time period was this object used in?
Was this a common object in hotels like Hotel Tivoli? Have you ever used one before? Do you still own one?
Have you stayed at or visited the Hotel Tivoli? Have you or anyone you know worked there?
Please share with us your information and stories about Hotel Tivoli in the comments section!
13 Comments
Carol Meyer
I have fond memories of the Tivoli. During the late 1960’s they had a great Happy Hour one night a week where Planters Punches were $ .45. In August of 1969 I spent a month at the Tivoli along with my dachshund while working for public health and waiting to repatriate to start a Fellowship at Medical College of Georgia. I remember sitting on the steps of the Tivoli, waiting for a ride when I heard one of the older ladies who lived there say, “Young man, you’re sitting in my chair”. The chairs on the veranda were pretty well reserved for the older women, many of whom were widows of Roosevelt medal holders. The Public Health nurses would go by to give them pedicures so they wouldn’t get infections in their feet. I was so disappointed when I returned in 1972, to find the Tivoli gone. STRI had charge of the area. The big tree laden with bromeliads located in what had been a back patio of the Tivoli was still there. Eventually there was a beautiful Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute library and laboratory building built on the site, along with an auditorium for seminars.
Mark House
I lived at the Tivoli from 1967 until the fall of 1969. My dad worked for a contractor that was widening the canal. Wonderful memories of the Tivoli. I am going back for my first time in November. What can I look for to designate where the Tivoli was?
Peggy Huff
In 1967, I and my fellow members of the Cristobal High School Girls Drill Team stayed there the night prior to the Veterans Day Parade in Balboa, CZ. My wedding reception was held at the Tivoli Hotel in 1970.
Fred Sill
Carol Meyer (above comment — Nov 23, 2013) mentions the formidable ladies on the Tivoli’s front porch. We called them “The Rocking Chair Brigade”. As former employees of the Canal, or widows of employees, they were allowed to stay in the hotel. The Tivoli was the center of society for the Pacific Side of the isthmus. President Theodore Roosevelt had been the first “official guest”. During early construction days, with no roads from the hotel to towns along the excavations — Empire, Culebra, Cascadas, Gorgona, etc. — anybody going there for a good time who missed the last train at night ended up sleeping over on one of the billiard tables, or commandeering a hand pumped railway car for the long trip home. My dad said one had to keep this in mind before asking a lady for a date at the Tivoli, i.e. preferably someone rather robust, able to help to handle a handcar.
Una Crawford
Name Sounds familiar. Did your family member work at the tropic test center?
Spike Pope
My family moved to the Canal Zone in 1966 and worked for the military. We arrived in the early hours of the morning at Tocumen airport and was transported to the Tivoli for temp stay until housing could be arranged. I will never forget the smell of the jungle as we traveled from the airport to the Tivoli. We didn’t stay there long but was very memorable as it was Carnival! I never had a chance. I fell in love with the country. After the Tivoli moved to Curundu, Fort Clayton then to Gamboa. What an experience growing up in the Zone.
v. monda
I moved to the Canal Zone in 1967 when my father received orders for Howard Air Force Base. I remember stepping off the plane and the humidity being so thick it stunned me. We were driven to the Tivoli and stayed several weeks until our house on base was ready. I thought the hotel was magical! We moved there in May and I had just completed the 3rd grade so I remember the feeling of being in this exotic hotel as a child saw it. I do remember however turning out the lights in our room at night and seeing termites swarming! Lol! The Tivoli has popped in my head out of the blue twice in the last few months.. Must be longing for that lush exotic peaceful childhood feeling!
Sally Deaton
We loved living in the tivoli in the 60s. Eating downstairs. Sitting on the front porch looking out at the bay. One day my little brother thought he would play some matches, which our mom took right away. Not a good idea to be lighting matches in an all wood building. When I went to school there, elementary school, we wood be brought to the tivoli for lunch….
Debby
I have a picture dated June 1, 1942 of my father and his squadron at some kind of gathering. Just wondering if it still existed.
Pat Racicot
My family and I arrived at the Tivoli Hilton on December 17, 1966. We only stayed there a few days before moving on to a house/trailer combination down the street from the U. S. Army Jungle Survival School in Curundu, Ft. Clayton. My father Gene Adams was the head driller of the canal widening project. We would go to the Tivoli for Special occasions and parties. They always had a Sweet Sixteen Ball every year in the lovely Grand Ballroom and my best friend got to Attend in 1970. I will never forget sitting at a table on that beautiful front porch eating a club sandwich for brunch with the other drillers wives and their kids It was a grand old wooden structure that was maintained with loving care by a marvelously genteel staff I can still hear the noise those wooden floors made when people danced on them.looking out from that wide veranda over the Pan-American Freeway and the huge park where it seemed like dozens of soccer games were always being played framed on the right by the Pan-Am building with its bullet holes and those incredibly huge flags flying above. I can still smell that wonderful place. thank-you for letting me relive those memories! Patricia J. Adams.
Richard Skillman
During the late 60s I was fortunate enough to be the only enlisted man on a team of Army civilian and Raytheon contractors who brought HAWK missiles down to be placed in a jungle canopy invironment. We made five week long trips. The first was to set the missiles up and then quarterly to check on their serviceability. Finally we would transport them back to the states to be test fired. On each of my week long stays, we got to stay at the Tivoli. The atmosphere for a young 19 year old GI was exotic. The staff, dressed in white would serve platters of fruits prepared as I had never seen before. Someone above mentioned turning off the lights at night and seeing termites. I don’t remember the termites, only that the lightbulb stayed on in the closet to reduce the humidity from mildewing our clothes. Definitely a by-gone era. Was so sorry to hear that the Tivoli was not preserved as a historic landmark.
Norma Barkman
Some of my friends from the Computer Center and I enjoyed many lunches at the Tivoli in the
60’s. Sliced pork smothered in bar-b-q sauce on a mecha, potato salad and baked beans were
a standard menu. Yum! We were transferred to a new duty station in 1969 and after being back in the states for a few months, I was contacted to come back to the Canal Zone to program the toll study which took about six weeks. It was then that I got to say in the Tivoli every day. It was such a grand place!
William Eggleston
I moved to Panama in 1961 and attended Ancon Elementary School. Each day we marched to the Tivoli. I remember the steps going up the porch seemed so big. I think it rained almost ever day right around lunch time.