Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

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THOMAS PASCOE, 
 
proprietor of the popular Hotel Lincoln, is a hotel man by both nature and 
education, for successful hotel proprietors, like poets, are born, not made.  
This natural adaptation developed by twenty‑three years' experience as a caterer 
and proprietor of public hostleries, has made him one of the most successful 
hotel men on the Pacific Coast. Mr. Pascoe is an Englishman by birth, and began 
active life on board a man-of-war in the British navy. He there had years of 
training as a caterer in the position of chief steward.  After leaving the navy 
and settling in the United States, he selected the hotel business as congenial 
to his taste, and conducted sucessively and successfully several prominent 
hotels in as many different towns and cities during the following decade, among 
them the Pascoe House in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Grand Hotel at 
Ukiah, in Mendocino County, California. He moved to Los Angeles in 1883, and 
when the completion of the transcontinental railroad to the city, a year or two 
later, had given an impetus to its business and growth, the Clifton House was 
built on North Fourth street, with the understanding that Mr. Pascoe was to 
lease and carry it on. It was completed and ready for occupancy in February, 
1886, when the new proprietor christened and opened it, it being then the 
largest family hotel in the city.  His lease expired March 1, 1889, and he 
declined to release it, expecting to retire from the hotel business, but being 
solicited by the owner and friends to take the Hotel Lincoln, he consented to do 
so, and opened it for guests on March 1, 1889, taking all of the patrons of the 
Clifton with him. He is ably assisted by his wife, who is thoroughly acquainted 
with all the details of a hotel, and has the peculiar charm of making all their 
guests feel at home, which has added greatly to the popularity of the hotels 
they have conducted. The Hotel Lincoln is situated on Hill street, just south of 
Second, and is a large, sightly, three-story and basement structure of. handsome 
architectural appearance, finished in modern style and furnished with the latest 
improved appliances and conveniences, the entire construction and arrangement 
admirably adapting it for a first-class family hotel. Its seventy commodious, 
light and airy guest rooms are chiefly arranged in suites, with bay windows 
looking out upon flower-embowered homes and the busy streets of the city below, 
or upon the rock-ribbed, snow-crowned mountains in the distance. The view from 
the balconies at the front of the hotel is rarely equaled for picturesque 
beauty. The dining room and parlors on the first floor are spacious, richly 
furnished and inviting; the halls and stairways are broad and cozy, and the 
entire building is the embodyment of home-like comfort. Under Mr. Pascoe's 
judicious management the Hotel Lincoln is one of the most attractive and restful 
resorts for the tourist sojourner to be found in Southern California.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 604
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler