Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
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There have been two luxury hotels in New York City called the Waldorf=Astoria. The first of them stood on the site of the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue, while the present hotel is located at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan. It is a 42-story Art Deco landmark that dates from 1931 and is now owned by the Hilton Hotels Corporation.
The modern hotel has three American and classic European restaurants, and a beauty parlor, Kenneth's Salon, located off the main lobby. Several luxurious boutiques surround the distinctive lobby, which has won awards for its restoration to the original period character.
An even more luxurious, virtual "hotel within a hotel" in its upper section is known as The Waldorf Towers.
Officially, the name of the hotel, for now-historical reasons, is written Waldorf=Astoria, with the two names separated by a double hyphen (not to be confused with an equals sign — it may however appear as such in this article due to technical limitations).
In January 2005, Hilton Hotels, the hotel's owner, announced it would launch a luxury brand called the Waldorf-Astoria Collection. In addition to the namesake, three other landmark properties, the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, La Quinta Resort and Club, and the Grand Wailea Resort & Spa, joined the brand. The Waldorf Towers is a member of Hilton's other luxury brand, Conrad Hotels & Resorts.
History
An Astor family feud contributed to the events which led to the construction of the original Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue.
It started as two hotels: one owned by William Waldorf Astor, whose 13-story Waldorf Hotel was opened in 1893 and the other owned by his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, called the Astoria Hotel and opened four years later and four stories higher.
William Astor, motivated in part by a dispute with his aunt, built the original Waldorf Hotel next door to her home, on the site of his father's mansion and today's Empire State Building. The hotel was built to the specifications of founding proprietor George Boldt; he and his wife Louise had become known as the operators of the Bellevue, an elite boutique hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Broad Street, subsequently the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. Later the noted hotel host, Claude H. Bennett, became Manager of the rebuilt and greatly enlarged Philadelphia hotel during the 1920s through the 1940s. His son, Robert C Bennett, and grandson, Robert Jr., were also employed on the management staff of the 'Grand Dame' of Broad Street in the 1970s. Louise Boldt had been instrumental in making that hotel attractive and socially acceptable to wealthy women. This characteristic probably was a major factor in asking George Boldt to become proprietor of the new Waldorf Hotel in New York. Boldt continued to own the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia.
William Astor's construction of a hotel next to his aunt's home furthered and strengthened his feud with her. But with Boldt's help, John Astor persuaded his aunt to move uptown. John Astor then built the Astor Hotel and leased it to Boldt. Initially foreseen as two separate entities, Boldt had planned the new structure so that it could be connected to the old by means what became known as Peacock Alley. To symbolize the connection, in more recent times the official name of the combined hotel was given an equals sign. The combined Waldorf-Astoria became the largest hotel in the world at the time, while maintaining the original Waldorf's high standards.
Founding proprietor, George Boldt, became wealthy and prominent internationally, if not so much a popular celebrity as his famous employee, Oscar Tschirky, "Oscar of the Waldorf." Boldt built one of American's most ambitious houses, Boldt Castle, on one of the Thousand Islands.
Trivia
- William derives his middle name from Walldorf, Germany, from which his great-grandfather John Jacob Astor emigrated in 1784. John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company founded Fort Astoria in Astoria, Oregon which is the first permanent United States settlement on the Pacific Ocean. Members of the expedition (which was the first trans-continental trip after Lewis and Clark) to establish settlement are called Astorians.
- During the 1950s and early 1960s, former U.S. president Herbert Hoover and retired U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, lived in suites on different floors of the hotel. A plaque affixed to the wall on the 49th Street side commemorates this. Around the time of World War I, inventor Nikola Tesla had lived in the earlier Waldorf=Astoria.
- The U.S. government keeps a large suite on the hotel's 42nd floor as the ambassadorial residence for its United Nations ambassador.
- The hotel has its own platform as part of the Grand Central Terminal, used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, and Douglas MacArthur, among others.
- Waldorf salad -- a salad consisting of apple, nuts (especially walnuts), celery, and mayonnaise or a mayonnaise-based dressing -- was first created in 1896 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York by Oscar Tschirky, who was the maître d'hôtel.
- Cole Porter and Linda Lee Thomas had an apartment in the Waldorf Towers, where she died in 1954.
External links and references
- [Official website]
- [Waldorf Towers]
- [The hotel's Grand Central Terminal platform], maintained as a personal project by an employee of Columbia University
- ["Peacock Alley" explanation], from the personal website of an etymological editor/consultant
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