Waldorf–Astoria (1893–1929) Socialites Information

The Waldorf–Astoria originated as two hotels, built side-by-side by feuding relatives on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Built in 1893 and expanded in 1897, the Waldorf–Astoria was razed in 1929 to make way for construction of the Empire State Building. Its successor, the current Waldorf Astoria New York, was built on Park Avenue in 1931.

The original Waldorf Hotel opened on March 13, 1893, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, on the site where millionaire developer William Waldorf Astor had previously built his mansion. Constructed in the German Renaissance style by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, it stood 225 feet (69 m) high, with 15 public rooms and 450 guest rooms, and a further 100 rooms allocated to servants, with laundry facilities on the upper floors. It was heavily furnished with European antiques brought back by founding proprietor George Boldt and his wife from an 1892 visit to Europe. The Empire Room was the largest and most lavishly adorned room in the Waldorf, and soon after opening, it became one of the best restaurants in New York City, rivaling Delmonico's and Sherry's.

The Astoria Hotel opened in 1897 on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, next door to the Waldorf. It was also designed in the German Renaissance style by Hardenbergh, at a height of about 270 feet (82 m), with 16 stories, 25 public rooms and 550 guest rooms. The ballroom, in the Louis XIV style, has been described as the "pièce de résistance" of the hotel, with a capacity to seat 700 at banquets and 1,200 at concerts. The Astor Dining Room was faithfully reproduced from the original dining room of the mansion which once stood on the site.

Connected by the 300 metres (980 ft) long corridor, known as "Peacock Alley" after the merger in 1897, the hotel had 1,300 bedrooms, making it the largest hotel in the world at the time. It was designed specifically to cater to the needs of socially prominent "wealthy upper crust" of New York and distinguished foreign visitors to the city. It was the first hotel to offer electricity and private bathrooms throughout. The Waldorf gained world renown for its fundraising dinners and balls, as did its celebrity maître d'hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, known as "Oscar of the Waldorf". Tschirky authored The Cookbook by Oscar of The Waldorf (1896), a 900-page book featuring all of the recipes of the day, including his own, such as Waldorf salad, Eggs Benedict and Thousand Island dressing, which remain popular worldwide today.

In 1799, John Thompson bought a 20-acre (8 ha) tract of land roughly bounded by Madison Avenue, 36th Street, Sixth Avenue, and 33rd Street, immediately north of the Caspar Samler farm, for (US$2400) £482 10s. In 1826, John Jacob Astor purchased Thompson's parcel, as well as one from Mary and John Murray who owned a farm on Murray Hill, in the area which is now Madison Avenue to Lexington Avenue, between 34th and 38th streets.[a] In 1827, William B. Astor, Sr. bought a half interest, including Fifth Avenue from 32nd to 35th streets, for $20,500. He built an unpretentious square red brick house on the southwest corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, while John Jacob Astor erected a home at the northwest corner of 33rd Street.

William Astor, motivated in part by a dispute with his aunt Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, built the Waldorf Hotel next door to her house, on the site of his father's mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street.[b] His father was the millionaire developer, William Waldorf Astor.[c] The hotel was built to the specifications of founding proprietor George Boldt, who owned and operated the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, an elite boutique hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife Louise Kehrer Boldt. The original plans for the Waldorf were for a hotel with 11 stories. Boldt's wife, Louise, believed that 13 was a lucky number. She persuaded her husband to add two floors to the construction.[d] William Astor's construction of a hotel next to his aunt's house worsened his feud with her, but, with Boldt's assistance, John Astor persuaded his mother to move uptown.[e] The Waldorf Hotel, named after the little town of Walldorf, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the Astors’ ancestral home, was opened for business March 13, 1893.

Early on, the Waldorf was a laughing stock with its large number of bathrooms and was known briefly as "Boldt's Folly" after Boldt, or "Astor's Folly", with the general perception of the palatial hotel being that it had no place in New York City. It appeared destined for failure. Wealthy New Yorkers were angry because they viewed the construction of the hotel as the ruination of a good neighborhood. Business travelers found it too expensive and too far uptown for their needs. In the face of all of this, Boldt decided that the hotel would host a benefit concert for St. Mary's Hospital for Children the day after the Waldorf opened. The hospital was the favorite charity of those on the Social Register. Despite rain the night of the ball, the ballroom filled with many of New York's First Families, who had paid $5.00 ($141 in 2017) for the concert and dinner.[f] Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt donated the services of the New York Symphony Orchestra led by Walter Damrosch to provide the music for the event. Even with proper escort, women of the times generally did not venture into hotels, but those attending also toured the facilities. While Boldt made news by insisting the Waldorf's waiters be clean-shaven even though he wore a beard, his decision to hire young Oscar Tschirky was one of the key factors in the hotel's success.[g] Oscar was personable, humble and very willing to tend to patrons' needs on an individual basis. More than thirty years later, Tschirky was able to recall the Waldorf's opening day and the names of many of the Social Register guests who made the hotel successful when it hosted the charity concert and dinner. Business soon picked up and the hotel earned $4.5 million ($126,000,000 in 2017) in its first year, exorbitant for that period. By 1895, the Waldorf added a five-story addition. This brought the hotel's ballroom down to the main floor; the move brought many parties and dinners which were formerly held in private homes, into the Waldorf. Adjacent to the new ballroom was the Oak Room, where one could sit by large fireplaces where there were always logs on the hearth. In winter, waiters would offer patrons complimentary baked potatoes with butter.

When a decision was made to build a second hotel next to the Waldorf, truce provisions were developed between the Astors which reserved some proprietary rights. The plan design used corridors to join the two buildings and there was even a bond provision for bricking up the corridors should the need arise. On November 1, 1897, Waldorf's cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, opened the 16 story Astoria Hotel on an adjacent site. The Astoria, named after Astoria, Oregon which was founded by John Jacob Astor in 1811, stood on the site of William B. Astor's house, and was leased to Boldt.

The two hotels, under one management, were renamed the Waldorf–Astoria. Situated on Fifth Avenue in what is now Midtown Manhattan, it was surrounded by streets on all sides. The Waldorf–Astoria had a frontage of 200 feet (61 m) on Fifth Avenue, 350 feet (110 m) on 33rd Street, 350 feet (110 m) on 34th Street, and 200 feet (61 m) on Astor Court, with 13 entrances opening directly from these thoroughfares. Below, extending to a depth 42 feet (13 m) beneath the sidewalk, and occupying an additional area of 75 by 242 feet (23 m × 74 m) running toward Broadway, were the basements, which contained the engine room, laundries, and kitchens. From the sidewalk to the observatory roof was a height of 250 feet (76 m). It was the largest hotel in the world at the time. The cost of the two buildings, exclusive of the furnishings but including the land, was about $15 million ($422,000,000 in 2017). The assessed value in 1897 was $12,125,000 ($341,000,000 in 2017) making it the next most valuable parcel on Fifth Avenue, after the B. Altman and Company site. The hotel became, according to author Sean Dennis Cashman, "a successful symbol of the opulence and achievement of the Astor family".

The hotel faced stiff competition from the early 20th century, with a range of new hotels springing up in New York City such the Hotel Astor (1904), perceived as a successor to the Waldorf-Astoria; The St. Regis (1904), built by John Jacob Astor IV as a companion to the Waldorf-Astoria; The Knickerbocker (1906), and the Savoy-Plaza Hotel (1927). By the 1920s, the hotel was becoming dated, and the elegant social life of New York had moved much farther north than 34th Street. The Astor family sold the hotel to the developers of the Empire State Building and closed the hotel on May 3, 1929; it was demolished soon afterwards. The Waldorf–Astoria Hotel records of 1893–1929 are held by the New York Public Library's Archives and Manuscripts division.

From its inception, the Waldorf was always a "must stay" hotel for foreign dignitaries. The viceroy of China, Li Hung-Chang stayed at the hotel in 1896 and feasted on hundred-year-old eggs which he brought with him. Mr. Li also brought his own stoves, chefs and servants with him to prepare and serve his meals. Upon his departure from the Waldorf, he ordered a basket of roses to be sent to every female guest at the hotel, and was very generous in the gifts and gratuities he provided for the hotel's staff. In 1902, a lavish dinner was organized for Prince Henry of Prussia; in addition, the hotel built a private door on its 33rd Street side and installed a private elevator. The staff was also called upon to form a "bucket brigade" for the prince's bath when there was a problem with the plumbing in the royal suite.One early wealthy resident was Chicago businessman J. W. Gates who would gamble on stocks on Wall Street and play poker at the hotel. He paid up to $50,000 a year to hire suites at the hotel, where he had his own private entrance and elevator.Grand Duchess Viktoria Feodorovna of Russia was invited by Waldorf president Lucius Bloomer to stay at the hotel in the 1920s.

The Waldorf–Astoria gained significant renown for its fundraising dinners and balls, regularly attracting notables of the day such as Andrew Carnegie who became a fixture. Banquets were often held in the ballroom for esteemed figures and international royalty. On February 11, 1899, Oscar of the Waldorf hosted a lavish dinner reception which the New York Herald Tribune cited as the city's costliest dinner at the time. Some $250 ($7,620.00 in 2017) was spent per guest, with bluepoint oysters, green turtle soup, lobster, ruddy duck and blue raspberries. Two months later, 120 sailors of the cruiser Raleigh were given a banquet, during which the gallery was decorated with silk banners and flags. One article that year claimed that at any one time the hotel had $7 million ($213 million in 2017) worth of valuables locked in the safe, testament to the wealth of its guests. In 1909, banquets, attended by hundreds, were organized for Arctic explorer Frederick Cook in September and Elbert Henry Gary, a founder of US Steel, the following month.

The hotel was also influential in advancing the status of women, who were admitted singly without escorts. Boldt's wife, Louise, was influential in evolving the idea of the grand urban hotel as a social center, particularly in making it appealing to women as a venue for social events, or just to be seen in the Peacock Alley. The combined hotel was the first to do away with a ladies-only parlor and provided women with a place to play billiards and ping-pong. It was the first New York hotel to allocate an entire room for afternoon tea. The teas began in the Waldorf Garden with attendance eventually being so large, both the Empire Room and at times, the Rose Room, had to be opened during the hours of four and six pm to accommodate the number of guests. Men were admitted to the teas only if they were in the company of a woman.

The United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic was opened at the hotel on April 19, 1912 and continued there for some time in the Myrtle Room, before moving on to Washington, D.C. John Jacob Astor IV was one of the people who perished on its ill-fated journey.

The Waldorf–Astoria Orchestra was under the direction of Joseph Knecht, who was formerly assistant concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera House. Consisting of fifty musicians, it was maintained by Boldt at an annual expense of $100,000. The orchestra performed regular Sunday night concerts in the grand ballroom. The Waldorf–Astoria Bar was a favorite haunt of many of the financial elite of the city from the hotel's inception in 1893, such as Diamond Jim Brady, Buffalo Bill Cody and Bat Masterson. A number of cocktails were invented at the bar, including the Rob Roy (1894) and the Bobbie Burns.[h]

On the exterior, the two and three lower stories in the respective buildings were of red sandstone, while the balance of the work to the roof-line was red brick and red terracotta. The building rested on solid rock and contained a fireproof steel frame. The first and second floors contained public spaces.

The combined hotel, after merging in 1897, had 1,300 bedrooms and 178 bathrooms, making it the largest hotel in the world at the time. With a telephone in every room and first-class room service, the hotel featured numerous Turkish and Russian baths for the gentlemen of the day to relax in. Many of the floors were arranged as separate hotels to further the comfort of the guests. Each of these floors had its own team of assistants—clerks, maids, page boys, waiters—as well as telephone and dumbwaiter service, and refrigerators. The bedrooms and corridors were heated by direct radiation. The family included a stained glass picture of Walldorf in the design of the hotel; it was located on the 33rd Street side over the main entrance to the South Palm Garden.

The Waldorf Hotel, built at a reported cost of about $5 million ($141,000,000 in 2017), opened on March 13, 1893 at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, on the site where millionaire developer William Waldorf Astor had previously built his mansion. The hotel stood 225 feet (69 m) high, about 50 feet (15 m) lower than the Astoria, with a frontage of about 100 feet (30 m) on Fifth Avenue, and a total area of 69,475 square feet (6,454.4 m2). It was a German Renaissance structure, designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, with 15 public rooms and 450 guest rooms, and a further 100 rooms allocated to servants, with laundry facilities on the upper floors.The New York Times proclaimed the hotel a palace after it opened in 1893.

The exterior featured loggias, balconies, gables, groups of chimneys, and tiled roofs. One of the chief features was the interior garden court, with fountains and flowers, walls of white terracotta, frescoes and stained glass. The main entrance to the hotel was "sheltered by an elaborate frosted-glass-and-wrought-iron marquee", and the entrance hall was built in Sienna marble, with a mosaic title floor and a coffered ceiling. The original reception desk of the Waldorf Hotel became a registration desk when it merged with the Astoria Hotel in 1897.

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