Waldorf Astoria New York

"How could one tell the story of the without evoking the Waldorf-Astoria? This seems almost impossible, as both edifices shared a site, at the corner of and Thirty-Fourth Street. This site, originally occupied by a small farm when it was bought by in 1827, has played a major role in the evolution of New York ... in the 1850s, had her mansion built on half the site, and she would organize lavish balls for the city's wealthy families, known as the . In 1893, her nephew, , erected on the other half of the site the , to which Caroline Astor replied in 1895 with the demolition of her own house, and the erection of her hotel, the . In 1897, the two hotels merged to become the prestigious Waldorf-Astoria. Thirty years later, the hotel aging and the price of land soaring, the Astors agreed to sell the whole site to real estate developers and decided to build a new Waldorf-Astoria uptown."

"The Peacock Alley Restaurant is an extension of the Waldorf's plush lobby, and it is lovely: filled with art deco treasures, ceilings etched with glass panels, patterned parquet floors, and murals of white peacocks. The walls are covered with French walnut burl s inlaid with ebony. The pillars are Moroccan marble, and the ceiling and cornices are covered in gold and silver leaf. ... Peacock Alley was the name given to a 300-foot-long corridor with amber marble and mirrored walls that connected two hotel buildings owned by 's great-grandsons, the feuding Astor cousins, and . It was a place to see and be seen. On weekends, up to 36,000 men and women walked the alley, admiring themselves and one another in the mirrors, prompting the name "Peacock Alley" as a description of the strutting to and fro. The Peacock Alley Restaurant was named for that famous corridor."

"... one of the most marvelous, I think, features of the Waldorf-Astoria is the use of nickeled throughout."

"The hyphenated Waldorf-Astoria was actually two interconnected Astor family hotels. Both were the work of New York architect, , who designed them in the German Renaissance style. The twelve-story Waldorf was built in 1893 by . It was soon dwarfed and enfolded by the adjacent L-shaped sixteen-story Astoria, built by William's cousin, the former . The hotels were joined in 1897. A nasty, long-running fight between Caroline and William led her to instruct Hardenbergh to design the Astoria so that it could be sealed off from the Waldorf at each floor."

"... In the record three-week-long on-site auction that followed the closing, souvenir collectors, sentimentalist, antiquarians, and dealers bid on more than twenty thousand lots of hotel property. ... The world-famous name "Waldorf-Astoria," which encapsulated the history of both an era and a dynasty, went for a token $1 to the builders of a new and otherwise unrelated hotel going up on Park Avenue. By February 1930 's great building, one of the architectural wonders of Manhattan, had been leveled."

"The hotel — an masterpiece by on in — always had a residential component: It was home to everyone from Cole Porter, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and the and to Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The building’s exterior was designated a landmark by the in 1993 and parts of its interior were designated by the same body in 2017. ... The hotel was sold for $1.95 billion in 2014 by , its previous owner, to , a Chinese company that closed the building in 2017 to restore and renew it, aiming to reopen it in four years. But the Chinese government seized control of Anbang in 2018, sending its chairman to prison for fraud, and created the Daija Insurance Group in 2019 to assume control over Anbang’s assets. Daija now owns the hotel and residences."

"Architect returned to design the bigger, grander Astoria, a task he fulfilled with considerable aplomb. Rising to a height of 18 stories and stretching 350 along West Thirty-fourth Street, it reduced the neighboring Waldorf to the status of poor relation. A mammoth cliff of dark red brick topped by a three-story , the new Astoria dominated the view for blocks up and down , its sheer magnitude setting a new standard for grand hotels of the coming century."

"The Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan is known for its grand public spaces, like its two-tiered ballroom and vast lobby. But upstairs, in a windowless corner of the hotel's administrative offices, Deidre Dinnigan toils in a cramped room not much larger than a closet. Ms. Dinnigan, the hotel's archivist, is responsible for cataloging and researching more than 4,000 objects, from filigreed brass room numbers to yellowing advertisements from the 1950s. ,,, The 123-year-old Waldorf Astoria is one of the few hotels with an extensive archive, and possibly the only one to have its own archivist. But the future of Ms. Dinnigan's position, and the collection that she oversees, is uncertain. The hotel, which was bought by a Chinese insurance company two years ago for a record $1.95 billion, is to close in the spring to undergo a conversion. Most of the 1,413-room premises will be turned into luxury condominiums, with a much smaller hotel component."