When it opened in 1912, Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald presided over a reception with over a thousand guests. Rooms had been booked as early as 16 months in advance. Its first manager, who also lived at the hotel, served for 22 years and he and the hotel were so prominent as to merit an obituary in the "New York Times". It became for some years the site of the annual Harvard-Yale dance and other post-football dances, denounced by the authorities of local women's colleges who forbade their students from attending: "These dances have nothing to do with the colleges in question, but have merely a financial interest in them. There is not doubt that they are of an extremely questionable nature owing to the fact that they are entirely opened to the public."