Astor to Astor, Dust to Dust: Astor Hotels In Gilded Age New York City

  


New York City has a long tradition of excellence in hotels. Once Manhattan became the U.S. center for commerce and culture, the city needed luxury accommodations for travelers and wealthy citizens. Two of these great hotels were built by the Astor family. These hotels would briefly be home to a roster of the days most important figures and offer glitz, glam, and wigs to guests. These two Astor hotels put even the nicest Holiday Inn to shame.


The Astor House Hotel, built by Astor progenitor John Jacob Astor I (after he washed the beaver blood from his hands) set the standards for what would come in hotels. Rooms cost an audacious $2 per night, but your dollar deuce got you water, a pitcher, a bowl, and free soap! The hotel boasted 300 guest rooms and a ground floor that offered 18 shops selling clocks, jewelry, pianos, soda water, medicine, wigs, among many other things - because of course you paid $2 a night in case you want to get drugged up and do a wig fashion show. Fancy people like Jenny Lind, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackery, and popular Prince Edward IV - beloved Bertie - friend to all Penny Princesses - stayed there. But by 1875 other Gilded Age hotels showed up this OG Masterpiece and the hotel closed in 1913.


Who wouldn't want to stay in a hotel that was built as a fuck you to Lina Astor? Her nephew Waldorf, after having a spat with his auntie, decided to pack up, tear down his mansion, sanction the building of a hotel, then moved to Europe. And just to flip the bird to Lina he never even stayed at his own hotel when he came to the states! John Jacob Astor IV and Lina would build their own hotel 4 years later, eventually joining the two. 


The Waldorf Hotel - which gave name to Waldorf of Muppets Statler and Waldorf - featured 15 public rooms, 450 guest rooms, and 100 rooms for servants, and was furnished with European antiques. The Empire Room, the Waldorf's restaurant, rivaled even Sherry's and Delmonico's. The Astoria - Caroline Astor's hotel - was 16 stories high, had 25 public rooms, 550 guest rooms, and was the first hotel with electricity and private bathrooms throughout. The Louis XIV style ballroom held 700 guests for banquets and 1,200 for concerts. In fact it was a concert that proved the hotel wasn't just a folly - neighborhood citizens disliked having a hotel in their midst and business travelers thought the hotel to be too expensive. The dinner and concert, held for a children's charity, cost $5 a ticket and guess could tour the hotel - and judge it super duper fancy enough for their neighborhood.


By the end of its first year the Waldorf earned $4.5 million. The hotel added five stories in 1895, and moved the ballroom to the ground floor, making it more accessible for neighborhood citizens to hold dinners, balls, debutante comings out, really all manner of exclusionary events. The Oak Room offered fires all winter long so chilly millionaires could warm their frozen tired tootsies.  Waiters gave out free buttered baked potatoes. Yeah, cause Robber Barons will drop thousands of dollars on antiques, but draw the line at pricey potatoes. When a viceroy to China stayed there he brought his own stoves and servants to prepare his meals. He sent every lady guest a basket of roses - now that's classy. The Waldorf Astoria's most notable employee was Oscar Tschirky - "Oscar of the Waldorf, " the hotel's Maitre D' Hotel.  Oscar was a Swiss immigrant who had an encyclopedic knowledge of food and wrote a popular cookbook, but despite never being a chef he popularized Thousand Island Dressing and created Waldorf Salad, which I'm sure you've had any time your mom tried to impress snooty other moms.

The hotel also kind of led the way in feminism. Ladies often did not enter hotels on escorted, but because of functions being held there, ladies could enter the hotel unescorted. The hotel dared to let ladies play billiards and ping pong without secluding them in a ladies only parlor. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was the first hotel to have specific room for afternoon tea - and - suck it patriarchy - gentleman needed to be escorted by a lady. But again Northern migration of the swells, changing standards, and a proliferation of other hotels made the Waldorf-Astoria outdated. The Waldorf-Astoria was sold to the developers of the Empire State Building and closed May 5th 1929. They paved paradise and put up a really really tall building.


SOURCES :

Hotel Astor. Wikipedia.

Waldorf-Astoria. Wikipedia.


Kaplan, Justin. When the Astors Owned New York : Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age. Viking, 2006.


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