Waldorf-Astoria (1893–1929)

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.[1] 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.[2][lower-alpha 1] 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.[4]

William Waldorf 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.[lower-alpha 2] After Astor's decision to leave the United States, he also decided to demolish his father's home and build a hotel on the property.[6] When the 1870 Astor home was demolished, there was no idea that Astor would build a hotel on the property.[7] Astor did not stay in his own hotel when visiting the U.S., preferring to stay elsewhere; he is known to have visited the Waldorf-Astoria only once.[8]

The hotel was built to the specifications of the founding proprietor George Boldt, who owned and operated the elite Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia with his wife, Louisa Augusta Kehrer Boldt (1860–1904). The original plans for the Waldorf were for a hotel with eleven stories; Louise believed that thirteen was a lucky number and persuaded her husband to add two floors to the construction.[9][lower-alpha 3] 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.[10][lower-alpha 4] The Waldorf Hotel, named after the Astor family's ancestral hometown of Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, was opened for business March 13, 1893. [12]

Floor plan of the Waldorf

Early on, the Waldorf was regarded with mockery over its large number of bathrooms and was known briefly as "Boldt's Folly" after Boldt, or "Astor's Folly",[13] with the general perception of the palatial hotel being that it had no place in New York.[14] 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 its opening.[12] The hospital was the favorite charity of those on the Social Register. Despite the rain the night of the ball, the ballroom filled with many of New York's First Families, who had paid $5.00 ($163.00 in 2022[15]) for the concert and dinner.[16][lower-alpha 5] Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt donated the services of the New York Symphony Orchestra led by Walter Damrosch to provide the music for the event.[16] Even with a proper escort, women of the times generally did not venture into hotels, but those attending also toured the facilities.[18] 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.[19][lower-alpha 6] Oscar was personable, humble and very willing to tend to patrons' needs on an individual basis.[18] 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.[20][21] Business soon picked up and the hotel earned $4.5 million ($124 million in 2021[22]) in its first year, exorbitant for that period.[23] 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.[24]

Waldorf Hotel (1893)

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.[25] On November 1, 1897, Waldorf's cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, opened the 16 story Astoria Hotel on an adjacent site.[26][27] 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.[28][26]

The hotel after the addition of the much larger Astoria wing (1915)

The two hotels, under one management, were renamed the Waldorf-Astoria.[29][30] 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).[31] It was the largest hotel in the world at the time.[32][33] The cost of the two buildings, exclusive of the furnishings but including the land, was about $15 million ($430 million in 2021[22]).[34] The assessed value in 1897 was $12.125 million ($348 million in 2021[22]) making it the next most valuable parcel on Fifth Avenue, after the B. Altman and Company Building site immediately northeast.[35] The hotel became, according to author Sean Dennis Cashman, "a successful symbol of the opulence and achievement of the Astor family".[36]

The hotel faced stiff competition from the early 20th century, with a range of new hotels springing up in New York City such as 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).[37] 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 afterward.[26] The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel records of 1893–1929 are held by the New York Public Library's Archives & Manuscripts division.[38]

Gentlemen's Cafe

Restaurant

Marie Antoinette parlor

Reading room

Henry IV drawing room

Louis XIV bedroom

The Waldorf Hotel, built at a reported cost of about $5 million ($138 million in 2021[22]), 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.[4][26] 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).[63] 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.[64][65] The New York Times proclaimed the hotel a palace after it opened in 1893.[66]

The exterior featured loggias, balconies, gables, groups of chimneys, and tiled roofs.[67] 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.[65] The original reception desk of the Waldorf Hotel became a registration desk when it merged with the Astoria Hotel in 1897.[65]

Beyond the lobby was the main corridor leading to the Empire Room, with an alcove containing elevators and a grand staircase. Near this was the Marie Antoinette parlor, which was used as a reception room for women. It contained 18th century antiques brought back by Boldt and his wife from an 1892 visit to Europe, including a bust of Marie Antoinette, and an antique clock which was once owned by the queen. The ceiling featured frescoes by Will Hicok Low, the central of which was called The Birth of Venus.[68] The Gentleman's Cafe was furnished with "robust black oak paneling, hunting murals, and stag-horn chandaliers".[69]

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.[70] It was modelled after the grand salon in King Ludwig's palace at Munich, with satin hangings, upholstery and marble pillars, all of pale green, and Crowninshield's frescoes.[71] Empire in style, the Waldorf's restaurant featured feathered columns of dark-green marble, and the pilasters that were opposite were of mahogany, with ormolu work in the panels.[34] The caps and bases of both columns and pilasters were gilded. This treatment occupied most of the wall space. The ceiling was divided by heavy beams running from column to column, and between these the flat space was divided into oval and other shaped panels with light mouldings.[34] The color scheme was in tints of pale-green and cream. The panels of the ceiling were frescoed with figures in pinkish-red on a blue sky or field. The walls were principally mahogany and gold, with a little color in the comparatively small wall-spaces left between openings.[72] Among the other rooms were the Turkish smoking room, with low divans and ancient Moorish armor, and the ballroom, in white and gold, with Louis XIV decorations.[64]

The Waldorf State Apartments, consisting of nine suites, were located on the second floor. The apartments, including the Henry IV Drawing Room, featured 16th and 17th century French and Italian antiques which Boldt and his wife had brought back from Europe.[72] Francois V Bedroom was a reproduction of the room at the Palais de Fontainebleau, and over the years was occupied by the likes of Li Hung-Chang of China, Chowfa Maha Rajiravuth, Prince of Siam, and Albert of Saxe-Coburg.[73] The apartments had their own music room and a banquet hall to seat 20, with a handsome china collection including 48 Sevres plates with European portraits.[74] There were about 6,000 lights in the hotel, with as many as 1,000 small candelabra lamps mounted in specially designed fixtures.[75] The electric fixtures were all furnished by the Archer & Pancoast Manufacturing Company, of New York, while the contract for the general installation work was carried out by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, of New York, the actual work of wiring being done by the Eastern District of the General Electric Company. The building was wired throughout on the system of the Interior Conduit and Insulation Company.[75]

Astoria's Ground Floor plan

First Floor plan

Roof plan

The Astoria Hotel, opened in 1897, was situated on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Like the Waldorf, it was designed in the German Renaissance style by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the same architect who designed the Waldorf.[26][67] With dimensions of 99 by 350 feet (30 m × 107 m), its height, from the floor of the sub-basement, which was 33 feet (10 m) below the street level, to the roof-line, was about 270 feet (82 m), or about 240 feet (73 m) above the street-level. It was 16 stories in height, including the four stories in the roof.[34] The building was constructed of stone, marble and brick, with a steel skeleton frame and modern fireproof interior construction, and was embellished with "French Second Empire Mansard-roofed towers with iron-work cresting as well as Austrian Baroque onion-domes over corners turrets".[60][67] There were 25 public rooms and 550 guest rooms, with miles of corridors, vestibules and balls.[67] The entrance featured a double set of plate glass doors to give protection in cold weather, and a U-shaped driveway for horse and carriages.[76]

Astoria main foyer

Astoria main office

Main ballroom as theater

Astoria restaurant.

The main corridor was nicknamed "Peacock Alley" by the New York press.[77] The corridor and foyer were treated with pilasters and columns of Sienna marble and a color scheme on the walls and ceilings of salmon-pink, with cream-color and pale-green. The capitals of the columns and pilasters were gilded of solid brass or lacquered. The main corridor ran the entire length of the building from east to west.[lower-alpha 8] To the left of it was the Astor Dining Room, fronting on Fifth Avenue, which measured 50 by 92 feet (15 m × 28 m). Great care was taken with it to faithfully reproduce the original dining room of the mansion, three floors above where the original dining room had stood,[79] including all of the original dining room's paneling, carpeting, drapery and fireplace mantel; Italian Renaissance pilasters and columns, carved of marble from northern Russia. The panels of silk hangings were of rose pompadour, and a series of Charles Yardley Turner mural paintings filled arches and panels at the south end of the room.[67][lower-alpha 9] On the right of the main corridor was the Garden Court of Palms, 88 by 57 feet (27 m × 17 m), rising three stories to a dome-like roof of amber glass 56 feet (17 m) above the floor. This, too, was used as a dining room. It was decorated in the Italian style, finished in gray, terracotta and Pavonazzo marble.[67] On the 34th Street side of the corridor was the cafe, 40 by 95 feet (12 m × 29 m), finished in English oak in the style of the German Renaissance, with Flemish decoration. The bar formed another room 40 by 50 feet (12 m × 15 m).[67]

Astor Gallery at the Astoria

Myrtle Room

Fifth Avenue corner suite drawing room

Astoria double bedroom

On the first floor, at the head-of the east main staircase, was the Astor Gallery, 87 by 102 feet (27 m × 31 m), looking out on 34th Street. The gallery, with seven French windows reaching 26 feet (7.9 m) from floor to ceiling, opened onto a terrace over the entrance to the hotel. The interior was finished in the style of the Hôtel de Soubise, with a blue, gray and gold color scheme. There was a parquet floor, and on the south side, opposite the street windows, were other windows which opened into the main corridor on the second floor. The musicians' balcony, upheld by two caryatids, was at the east end. All the balcony railings were of gilded metal work. The mural paintings were notable: four panels, two at either end of the room, and twelve pendentive panels, six on either side and painted by Edward Simmons depicted the four seasons and the twelve months of the year.[67] The "Colonial Room" was decorated in red, contrasting with white woodwork.[34] The second floor contained a private suite of apartments at the northeast corner, with large drawing rooms, dining room, butler's pantry, hallway, three bedrooms, three maids' bedrooms and five bathrooms, all finished in old English oak. All the floors above the third were given up to suites and bedrooms up to the 14th floor. There was a bath for nearly every room, and every bathroom had windows opening to the air, not into shafts. In every room, there was a large trunk closet.[81]

The ballroom, in the Louis XIV style, has been described as the "pièce de résistance" of the hotel, measuring 65 feet (20 m) by 95 feet (29 m) and 40 feet (12 m) (three stories) in height.[60] It had a capacity to seat 700 at banquets and 1,200 at concerts, and featured tints of ivory-gray and cream in its design.[34] Noted vocalists such as Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba performed in the ballroom, with conductor Anton Seidl leading a series of concerts there in the year the combined hotels opened for business. It was possible to buy season tickets for the musical offerings; a box for a season was US$350 and a seat for a season on the ballroom floor was priced at US$60.[82]

On the hotel's top floor was the roof-garden, enclosed on all sides by glass, with a glass roof over. It was furnished with rattan chairs and lounges in pale-green and pink, hung across with gauzy fabric.[34] On the roof on the 34th Street side was the grand promenade, 90 by 200 feet (27 m × 61 m), on solid footing high in the air, with a band stand, fountains, and trellises of columns. The roof garden restaurant occupied a space 75 by 84 feet (23 m × 26 m), and was roofed in. The ceiling was 24 feet (7.3 m) high. At the northeast and northwest corners of the roof garden were towers, with spiral stairways within, leading up to the copper covered roofs of the pavilions, which were 250 feet (76 m) above the sidewalk.[67] The palm gardens, used as cafes, rose to a height of two and three stories respectively and were roofed-over with domes of tinted glass. Balconies at the various floor levels opened on to these courts to overlook them. The materials used were cream-colored brick and terracotta, and were Italian Renaissance in style.[34]

In the sub-basement were the Sprague screw machines for the electric elevators, the fire pumps, the house pumps, the ice plant, and the six Babcock & Wilcox water tube boilers. The elevator system, which served the house from subbasement to roof, was electric, taking its power from the generating plant within the building. There were 18 elevators.[67] The machinery was located in the sub-basement. The boilers aggregated about 3,000 horse power, the electric generators taking 2,200 horse-power of the total energy. The elevators were run by it, as were the 15,000 incandescent lamps, branching from 7,500 outlets.[34] The system of heating and ventilating the public rooms was that of forced draught by means of powerful blowers situated in the sub-basement that forced the fresh air between steam-coils, where it became moderately heated before entering the ducts that lead it to the various rooms. This heat was further augmented by direct radiators placed behind screens in the recesses of the windows and elsewhere.[34]