Hotels used to have smoked glass to keep the candelabra-lit activities inside private, and also to tantalise the workers on the outside with silhouettes of grandeur.
When the revolution came, the workers burned down these luxuriant institutions of the imperialist state, and slaughtered their inhabitants. In their place, they then built new hotels, hotels with clear glass façades.
Their interiors were neither gilded nor fitted with crystal. Instead, they were dark, murky places, the deepest of reds carpeting the floors and the darkest of brown wallpapers covering the walls, with candles hidden away in corners. This was their image of luxury.