Waldorf Astoria New York
The Waldorf Astoria New York is a luxury hotel and residential condominium building in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. Located at 301 Park Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, it is a 47-story, Art Deco structure designed by architects Schultze and Weaver and completed in 1931. The building was the world's tallest hotel until 1957, when it was surpassed by Moscow's Hotel Ukraina. An icon of glamor and luxury, the Waldorf Astoria is one of the world's most prestigious and best-known hotels. Both the exterior and the interior of the Waldorf Astoria are designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as official landmarks.
The original Waldorf-Astoria, built in two stages in the 1890s, was demolished in 1929 to make way for the construction of the Empire State Building. Conrad Hilton acquired management rights to the hotel in October 1949, and the Hilton Hotels Corporation bought the hotel outright in 1972. It underwent a $150 million renovation by Lee Jablin in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 2009, the Waldorf Astoria and Towers had 1,416 rooms; the most expensive room, the Presidential Suite, was designed with Georgian-style furniture to emulate that of the White House.
The Anbang Insurance Group of China purchased the Waldorf Astoria New York for $1.95 billion in 2014, making it the most expensive hotel ever sold. Anbang closed the entire building in March 2017 for extensive renovations, converting the upper stories into 375 condominiums and retaining 375 hotel rooms on the lowest 18 floors. Dajia Insurance Group took over the Waldorf Astoria when Anbang went bankrupt in 2020, and, after several delays, the hotel reopened in July 2025. The hotel has three restaurants: Peacock Alley, Lex Yard and Yoshoku.
The Waldorf Astoria has been known for its lavish dinner parties and galas, often at the center of political and business conferences and fundraising schemes involving the rich and famous. After World War II, it played a significant role in world politics and the Cold War, culminating in the controversial World Peace Conference of March 1949. The Presidential Suite was the residence of Herbert Hoover after his wife died for 20 years, and Frank Sinatra kept a suite at the Waldorf from 1979 until 1988. Some of the luxury suites were named after celebrities who lived or stayed in them, including Cole Porter, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Douglas MacArthur, and Winston Churchill.
Name
The first name of the hotel is ultimately derived from the town of Walldorf, which lies in the north of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, south of Mannheim and Heidelberg. The name of the town is derived from the German words, meaning "forest", and, meaning "village". Walldorf is the ancestral home of the Astor family, the prominent German-American family to which the two side by side original hotels belonged, the Waldorf and the Astoria.The hotels were soon joined by what was called peacock alley, and afterwards the hotel was known as the Waldorf-Astoria with a single hyphen, as recalled by a popular expression and song, "Meet Me at the Hyphen". The sign was changed to a double hyphen, looking similar to an equals sign, by Conrad Hilton when he purchased the hotel in 1949. The double hyphen visually represents "Peacock Alley", the hallway between the two original hotels on Fifth Avenue. The use of the double hyphen was discontinued by its parent company Hilton in 2009, shortly after the introduction of the Waldorf Astoria Hotels and Resorts chain.
History
The original hotels on Fifth Avenue were built by feuding relatives. The Waldorf Hotel was opened in 1893, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, on the former site of millionaire developer William Waldorf Astor's mansion. In 1897, Waldorf's cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, opened the Astoria Hotel on an adjacent site where his mansion had been. The hotels were initially built as separate structures but were intended to be connected by an alley. The hotel subsequently became known as the "Waldorf-Astoria", the largest hotel in the world at the time.From the early 20th century, the hotel faced stiff competition from newer hotels in New York City such as the Hotel Astor, St. Regis, the Knickerbocker, and the Savoy-Plaza. By the 1920s, the Waldorf Astoria was becoming dated, and the elegant social life of New York had moved much farther north. The Astor family sold the hotel to the developers of the Empire State Building, closing the hotel in 1929 and demolishing it soon after.
Development of new location
The idea of a new Waldorf-Astoria hotel was based on the concept that a large, opulent hotel should be available in New York for distinguished visitors. Financial backing was not difficult to get in the summer of 1929, as times were prosperous. The stock market had not yet crashed, nor had the Depression arrived. However, before ground was broken for the new building, some of the investors became dubious about whether this was the right time to be investing in a luxury hotel. The land for the new hotel was formerly owned by the New York Central Railroad, which had operated a power plant for Grand Central Terminal on the site. New York Central had promised $10 million toward the building of the new Waldorf-Astoria. The railroad and all the other investors decided to honor their commitments and take their chances with the uncertain financial climate. In October 1929, the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria Corporation obtained a 26-year lease from New York Central, and placed a $11 million first mortgage on the site.On March 24, 1930, the first steel column in the new hotel was installed, and stonework installation began on June 3. The hotel's construction required massive amounts of materials, including 10,000 metal door frames, 11 million bricks, of gypsum and terracotta partition blocks, and of concrete floors. The new Waldorf Astoria had gold-plated doorknobs on eight stories, and its guestrooms, totaling, made the hotel the most spacious in New York City. It used of steel, more than in the Woolworth Building. Several crews of workers labored simultaneously, and not all of them consulted with each other, leading to inconsistencies in the design. The hotel's steel frame topped out, above street level, on October 22, 1930. The last stone on the Waldorf Astoria's facade was installed at a ceremony on February 4, 1931.
On October 1, 1931, the new building opened on Park Avenue, between 49th and 50th streets, following a soft opening the previous day. It was the tallest and largest hotel in the world at the time, covering the entire block. The slender central tower became known as the Waldorf Towers, with its own private entrance on 50th Street, and consisted of 100 suites, about one-third of which were leased as private residences. NBC received the exclusive right to broadcast events and music from the hotel and to book live entertainment there. President Herbert Hoover said on the radio, broadcast from the White House: "The opening of the new Waldorf Astoria is an event in the advancement of hotels, even in New York City. It carries great tradition in national hospitality...marks the measure of nation's growth in power, in comfort and in artistry...an exhibition of courage and confidence to the whole nation". About 2,000 people were in the ballroom listening to this speech, but by the end of the business day, the 2,200-room hotel had only 500 occupants.
The hotel contained several innovations for its time. The Waldorf Astoria contained phones that rang automatically, a first for its time; teletype devices; a telephone extension in each of the 1,550 two-bedroom suites; and a telephone switchboard that served 2,535 extensions. There were radios in all 2,000 guestrooms and in 15 public rooms, connected by of wire. 140 suites on the upper stories had provision for privately owned receivers. Soon after the hotel opened, hotelier Conrad Hilton, almost bankrupt at the time, reportedly cut out a photograph of the hotel from a magazine and wrote across it, "The Greatest of Them All". Nonetheless, the Waldorf-Astoria did not begin operating at a profit until 1939. Lucius Boomer continued to manage the hotel in the 1930s and 1940s, a commanding figure to whom Tony Rey referred as "the greatest hotelman of his era". Boomer was elected chairman of the board of the Waldorf-Astoria Corporation on February 20, 1945, a position he held until his death in July 1947.
Early years and international politics
Like the original hotel, from its inception, the Waldorf Astoria gained worldwide renown for its glamorous dinner parties and galas, often at the center of political and business conferences and fundraising schemes. Author Ward Morehouse III has referred to the Waldorf Astoria as "comparable to great national institutions" and a "living symbol deep within our collective consciousness". It had the "greatest banquet department in the world" at the time according to restaurateur Tom Margittai, with the center of activity being the Grand Ballroom. On August 3, 1932, some 200 people representing the "cream of New York's literary world" attended the Waldorf Astoria to honor Pearl S. Buck, the author of The Good Earth, which was the best-selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932. One dinner alone, a relatively "small dinner" attended by some 50 people in June 1946, raised over $250,000.During the 1930s and 1940s the hotel's guests were also entertained at the elegant "Starlight Roof" nightclub by the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra and such noted musicians as: Xavier Cugat, Eddie Duchin, Lester Lanin and Glenn Miller. In the Wedgwood Room, guests dined during performances by entertainers including Frank Sinatra, Victor Borge, the Mischa Borr Orchestra, with John Serry, the Leo Reisman Orchestra, Annamary Dickey, Corinna Mura, Paul Draper, and Gracie Fields.
The hotel played a considerable role in the emerging Cold War and international relations during the postwar years, staging numerous events and conferences. On March 15, 1946, Winston Churchill, who had recently given his Iron Curtain speech, attended and addressed a welcoming dinner at the hotel given by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and from November 4 to December 12, 1946, the Big Four Conference was held in Jørgine Boomer's apartment on the 37th floor of the Towers. On November 24, 1947, 48 prominent figures of the Hollywood film industry met at the Waldorf Astoria and discussed what would become the Waldorf Statement, banning people with Communist beliefs or tendencies from the Hollywood film industry, initially aimed at the Hollywood Ten and becoming the blacklist. On June 21, 1948, a press conference at the hotel introduced the LP record.
From March 27 to 29, 1949, the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, also known as the Waldorf World Peace Conference, was held at the hotel to discuss the emerging Cold War and the growing divide between the US and the Soviet Union. The event was organized by the struggling American Communist Party and was attended by the likes of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Vyshinsky, composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich, and writer Alexsander Fadeyev. It was picketed by anti-Stalinists running under the banner of America for Intellectual Freedom, and prominent individuals such as Irving Howe, Dwight Macdonald, Mary McCarthy and Robert Lowell.
In 1954, Israeli statesman and archaeologist Yigael Yadin met secretly with the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Mar Samuel in the basement of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to negotiate the purchase of four Dead Sea Scrolls for Israel; Yadin paid $250,000 for all four scrolls. Among the hotel's notable events was the April in Paris Ball, a gala event whose mission was to improve Franco-American relations, share cultures, assist US and French charities, and commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of the founding of Paris. Established by the hotel's banquet manager Claude Philippe in 1952, it was managed mostly by socialites; the ball was hosted annually until 1959.
Hilton acquired management rights to the hotel on October 12, 1949. Restaurateur George Lang began working at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in 1955, and on December 13, 1955, he helped organize the American Theatre Wing's First Night Ball to celebrate Helen Hayes's 50th year in show business. He did much to organize dinners at the Waldorf to assist with Hungarian issues and relief. On one occasion, an event was attended by Edward G. Robinson and pianist Doklady and some $60,000 was raised. Under Hilton's ownership, the lobby was refurbished in the 1950s and again in the 1960s.