Paris: A new skyscraper to rival the Eiffel Tower

A new book from A.K. Sandoval-Strausz's, Hotel: An American History, is full of fun tidbits. Here are eight facts that surprised us. 1. Hotels as we know them now are a distinctly American invention. Large hostelries had been built earlier in Europe and elsewhere, but these were primarily for kings and nobles. 2. Before the age of hotels, American travelers stayed at inns and taverns where they had to share beds. "After you have been some time in bed," complained one wayfarer in 1767, "a stranger of any condition comes into the room, pulls off his clothes, and places himself, without ceremony, between your sheets." 3. The first U.S. hotel was City Hotel, a five-story, 137-room hostelry located on lower Broadway in Manhattan. It opened in 1797. 4. In the 1840s, Americans considered it to be unpardonably rude to ask for room service because this implied that you thought yourself too good to sit at the same table with everybody else. In the world's first modern democracy, this was unforgivably snobbish. 5. One nineteenth-century minister preached that hotels were immoral. Asked why, he explained that any establishment that sold liquor and contained so many beds had to be sinful. 6. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, and other public accommodations, was based on an ancient Roman law code from 530, known as Justinian's Digest. The ancient rules prohibited innkeepers from picking and choosing which travelers they would accept as guests and which they wouldn't. 7. The apartment building as an architectural type is partly modeled on the hotel. Throughout the nineteenth-century, many wealthy American families chose to live permanently in hotels because the work of cooking, cleaning, and laundry was done by hotel staff rather than wives and daughters. Building designers soon adapted hotel architecture to create a new kind of shared dwelling. 8. Hotels helped to advance the settlement of the U.S. frontier because they allowed tourists to experience the appealing weather and natural beauty of new places. Hotels like the Antlers in Colorado Springs, the Raymond in Pasadena, California, and the Ponce de León in St. Augustine, Fla., spurred huge migrations to surrounding regions. —A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, author of Hotel: An American History, (text edited for the blog format; interview by JD Rinne)

Heads up: On July 12 and 13, Santa Fe will host the Fifth Annual International Folk Art Market. Handicraft artisans from more than 40 countries—including Zambia, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Rwanda, and Botswana—will gather to sell their wares at Milner Plaza (folkartmarket.org), tickets from $5. The market is set up so that you can meet the men and women who created the artwork for sale, buy international snacks like Cameroonian meat pies from vendors, listen to Japanese Taiko drummers, and watch Chinese dragon dancers in action. Since its inception, the market in Santa Fe has become the world's largest international folk art market. The wares for sale are renowned among art collectors for their affordability and high quality. The market's loftier goals, however, are fostering economic and cultural sustainability for folk artists in attendance: Artists participating in the market are invited to a free, two-day business-development workshop, and the costs of traveling and shipping their goods to Santa Fe are often offset by grants and donations. The only problem is finding a free hotel room when the market is in town, so act fast!

A sweet little clapboard lighthouse at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula—overlooking Grand Traverse Bay’s rocky shoals—opens to the public on June 7 for the first time since its construction in 1870. Visitors can climb the tower for views and brush up on the history of the lighthouse, which shined a kerosene lamp and then an electric beacon until it was decommissioned after World War II. If you have a month and $600 to spare, you can be among the first to try out a new volunteer lighthouse keeper program at Old Mission Point Lighthouse. It’s modeled after successful one- and two-week opportunities at Grand Traverse Lighthouse across the bay in Northrop. Volunteers should expect to pitch in with light maintenance work, man the gift shop, and act as informal guides available to field visitors’ questions (not to worry, there’s an orientation). The $600 per person fee covers a month’s stay at the lighthouse in private quarters that include a bedroom, a fully equipped kitchen, a living room, and an office space. While away any free time by exploring the 18-mile peninsula’s beaches, vineyards, hiking and cycling trails, and sites like a furnished log cabin and a 1850s general store. INFO Admission to Old Mission Point Lighthouse is $4 for adults, $2 for kids; open 10am-5pm during the opening weekend (June 7-8), daily from June 11 through Labor Day, and weekends during leaf-peeping season. Call 231/386-7195 for details on volunteering at either lighthouse. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL Stay in a Lighthouse in Croatia Work as an Innkeeper for the Weekend

For our anniversary issue, we asked you to tell us about your favorite restaurant. Nearly 400 of you wrote in. Narrowing the list down to 38 was tough, but we put together your suggestions to get America's Favorite Restaurants: Where to eat like a local, from sea to shining sea. We didn’t have the print space to pack in more, but the web is a bit more roomy. So here’s your chance: What local restaurant would you add to the list?