“We started throwing things out the window pretty quickly and I remember that the walls of the closet were very hot.”All manner of things were thrown from the windows guests’ personal belongings and furniture.A dentist had an office in the building a dentist’s chair and boxes of false teeth flew out of that window. It was built in 1924 by the Furness-Withy shipping line and was the first hotel built in Bermuda after the First World War.It was designed by the American firm Warren & Wetmore which also designed Grand Central Terminal and the Biltmore and Ritz-Carlton Hotels in New York City.The hotel was known for its lush 15 acres of grounds, swimming pool and grand ballroom, although the original hotel had quite a boxy modern design which shocked Bermuda at the time.An advertisement from the 1930s billed it as the “centre of social activity in Bermuda” and bragged about its “fireproof construction”.Unfortunately, this was later proved woefully untrue.One of the worst hotel fires in Bermuda’s history began with a small whiff of smoke coming from under the eaves of the top floor of the Bermudiana on September 4, 1958.That afternoon Patricia Dooley (now Fortenbaugh), 15, was swimming in the hotel pool.She had her first job but was off because it was a Thursday afternoon, a time when most businesses closed in Bermuda.Her father, Carroll Dooley, was the general manager of the hotel which, at that time, had around 450 guests.“I saw the smoke and since we were living in the hotel at the time, went up to our apartment to check things out,” said Mrs Fortenbaugh. Our spotlight on Bermuda’s hotel heritage continues here with a look at the Bermudiana Hotel which was torn down in the 1990s.During the heyday of Bermuda tourism it was one of our most popular hotels.
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