NEW YORK -- When President Herbert Hoover opened the 'new' Waldorf-Astoria Hotel 50 years ago, he predicted that in 50 years America's growth and technological development would necessitate a move 'to even a finer and more maganificent place and equipment.'
But the 47-story, 1,852-room flagship of the Hilton Hotels chain shows no sign of moving from the prime Park Avenue site where it opened its doors to its first guest, banker Charles Hayden, one of the hotel's chief financial backers, on Sept. 21, 1931. The first to dine on the premises was King Prajadhipok of Siam and Queen Rambat Barni.
Glamor of regal and presidential magnitude has always been the Waldorf-Astoria's stock in trade, just as it was for the 'old' Waldorf-Astoria which was demolished in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building.
Hoover gave the hotel his vote of confidence by moving in when he was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and living there the rest of his life.
Other, newer hotels have tried and failed to take the Waldorf's place in the life of the city and the nation. It truly lives up to its sobriquet, 'The Unofficial Palace of New York,' and even the scores of bums who camp out in the railroad labyrinth that runs below the Waldorf's basement are proud to call it home.
Few who stop to admire the still-modern architecture of the world's first skyscraper hotel and its meticulously maintained interior realize what a gamble it was for its builders, Boomer-DuPont Properties Inc. The real estate investment firm completed plans for its construction on the site of a railroad powerhouse less than a month after the 1929 stock market crash.
The nation was in the grip of the Great Depression when Hoover opened the hotel via an NBC broadcast from the White House. Its construction was, he said, 'an exhibition of courage and confidence to the whole nation' and 'a contribution to the maintenance of employment.'
It was also a drain on its principal investors, Sen. T. Coleman duPont of the Delaware industrial dynasty and the New York Central and the New Haven and Hartford Railroads. In 1932, Lucius Boomer, then the hotel's president, slashed 500 from the staff of 2,000 (the current staff size) because only 232 guests were registered. Hotel business was so bad that no new hotel was built in the city for more than 25 years.
The Waldorf operated in the red until Conrad Hilton satisfied a longtime dream by acquiring management rights in 1949. By the end of 1950, he had the hotel operating at a profit, and in 1977 he bought it from the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad for $36 million.
Hilton has infused millions of dollars to update what by New York standards is an elderly structure. Most recent improvements are a $2 million computerized phone system, a computerized check-in system, speedier elevators, improved air conditioning and thermopane windows.
'This grand old gal still has the ambiance and charm of 50 years ago, but it has all the comforts of a new hotel and the space new hotels don't offer,' said General Manager Eugene S. Scanlan, who began his career as a kitchen apprentice in 1942. 'Occupancy is over 80 percent on an annual average and we are sold out many nights.'
Asked what was the greatest change he had noticed in his years at the hotel, Scanlan replied: 'Years ago the Waldorf was only for the wealthy. Now it's affordable to everybody. More people have a higher income level and they've read about the Waldorf and want to stay here. We have lots of families on the weekends because Hilton doesn't charge for kids.'
The hotel is enjoying a year-long celebration of the half-century mark, offering the public a selection of especially priced 'golden rainbow' weekends recalling Ginger Rogers' 1945 movie, 'Weekend at the Waldorf.'
Scanlan is planning a splashy but as yet secret birthday event on Oct. l. He already has cut several golden birthday cakes at a series of celebratory luncheons in the Hilton Room. These have been occasions of nostalgia for some of the older guests.
They can recall that for many years this room to the right of the hotel foyer was called the Empire Room -- one of the showcases for top entertainment talents in the nation.
But the Waldorf no longer offers its guests a lavish dinner with star entertainment, nor does any other luxury hotel in the city. They cannot afford to compete with the star fees paid by Las Vegas casinos, and now Atlantic City.
When public tastes change, the Waldorf changes, too. However, the subtle aura of exclusivity still remains, especially on the occasion of the annual Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball, founded during World War II to replace individual debuts, the International Debutante Ball which dotes on titled young ladies from Europe, and the April in Paris Ball.
These are held in the grand ballroom, the largest tiered ballroom in New York City decorated in the Fragonard style by Broadway designer Oliver Smith. It has a fully equipped stage where such extravaganzas as the Milliken & Company shows have been produced, as well as the Harvard Hasty Pudding Club shows. Scanlan said it is busier than ever before.
The April in Paris Ball, once far more glamorous than it is now, was given birth in 1952 by the astute business coupling of French-born banquet manager Claudius Charles Philippe and Elsa Maxwell, a grossly plump and perennially broke Society jester. Both were on the take and their big new charity ball publicizing the emerging International Set paid off handsomely.
Miss Maxwell earned her bed and board at the Waldorf by arranging sumptuous and amusing events on the premises, such as her barnyard party with real hogs, hogcallers and haystacks in the elegant Jade Room. For one April ball, she cast Marlene Dietrich as ringmaster of a mini-Ringling circus and rode into the ballroom on an elephant. Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen mused that she couldn't decide 'which one was bigger, Elsa or elephant.'
The current ball chairman, Mrs. James Van Alen, ties the 'new' Waldorf to the 'old.' Her husband is the great-grandson of Gilded Age social leader Mrs. William Backhouse Astor Jr., who called herself THE Mrs. Astor and was, because of her silly pretensions, one of the reasons for the founding of the hotel.
It was Mrs. Astor's nephew and next-door neighbor on Fifth Avenue, William Waldorf Astor, who decided to tear down his mansion and build a hotel on the site and name it after Waldorf, his family's ancestral village in Germany. His gesture was one of pique because he had failed to be elected to Congress and felt his wife, not his aunt, was THE Mrs. Astor. He moved to England and never came back. The hotel opened in 1893 with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra in the dining room.
Mrs. Astor decamped for a quieter neighborhood uptown two years later and her son, Col. John Jacob Astor IV, erected the Astoria Hotel on the site of her mansion, naming it for the town in Oregon founded by the family. Burying the hatchet, the Astor cousins joined their hotels with a corridor which was dubbed the Peacock Alley because capital 'S' Society strutted there.
The Waldorf-Astoria was the first hotel in the country where the elite entertained guests at dinner in public rooms. It immediately became a magnet for charity events, testimonial banquets, fund-raisers, meetings and conventions of every stripe. Concerts were very much a part of the hotel's life, and Albert Morris Bagby's musicals were a feature of Monday mornings for more than 50 years, ranging from the youthful Enrico Caruso to the aging Kirsten Flagstad.
The hotel opened during a national financial panic but it was successful until 1920 when passage of the liquor prohibition amendment ended public tippling, one of the most profitable aspects of the hotel industry. Also, the city's center had moved north, leaving the Waldorf in an inconvenient location.
In 1924, the Astors sold out to DuPont's associate, Boomer, who turned a tidy profit by reselling to the Empire State Building interests and getting the name Waldorf-Astoria for only $1.
Making the transfer to the new Waldorf with DuPont and Boomer was the old hotel's favorite maitre d', Oscar Tschirky, who began work in 1893 and wound up with the official title of 'Host.' It was Oscar, though not a cook, who gave to the world Waldorf salad, containing apples and walnuts, and macaroons so good that Lyndon B. Johnnson stuffed his pockets with them at a banquet until Lady Bird hissed, 'Stop that!'
