By Sebastian Moll August 10, 2016 – 10:56 pm
The Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan is one of the most famous hotels in the world.
Photo: Getty
The legendary New York luxury hostel is being fundamentally remodeled. The new Chinese owners are planning 1,100 luxury apartments for the overseas rich. An institution steeped in history is lost.
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By Sebastian Moll
08/10/2016 – 10:56 pm
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New York – Ward Morehouse III is an apparition from another time. One who refused to change with the world around him. The 76-year-old sits in pinstripe plush armchairs in the dim lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, legs crossed, a perfect complement to the Art Deco elegance that surrounds him. Morehouse looks like an old-school dandy who, along with the interior around him, ended up in the wrong century. Still, the theater critic and writer Morehouse, who grew up in the Waldorf Astoria, is not nostalgic. “I don’t like people who always say that everything was better in the past,” he says.
Nor can Morehouse join the chorus of those who fear that the changes that lie ahead of the hotel will mean the end of the institution that was the epitome of New York glamor for much of the 20th century. “I even believe that it will be better than what we have now.” We are talking about the complete renovation of the house, which was planned by its builders in the 1920s as “the greatest hotel of all time”. The new owners – a Chinese insurance company – want to completely hollow out the legendary skyscraper on Park Avenue and convert it for a billion dollars. 1100 rooms are to be converted into luxury apartments, the remaining 500 suites are to be upgraded and modernized.
Morehouse was born in the Waldorf Astoria in 1945
For Morehouse, this change does not mark the end of the Waldorf idea – which, in its first incarnation in the 1890s, was intended to be the center of high society’s social life. Rather, he believes that the new Waldorf will save this original idea of the hotel.
Morehouse was born in the Waldorf Astoria in 1945. His father, like himself later one of the leading New York theater critics, lived in the Waldorf at the time. It was an existence that today is only known from stories.
The hotel was the center of life for the New York theater world
Morehouse describes these times in his book on the Waldorf Astoria. Back then, the New York theater world was a clique that moved through the days and nights together. The hotel served her as a living room, bedroom, restaurant and ballroom at the same time. “They met in the lounge café for breakfast. In the afternoons my father interviewed the stars and directors. Then you took your cocktail, dined, and went to the theater. Finally the day ended at the oak-paneled Norsk Bar in the lobby. “
And then there were the legendary balls, such as the annual gala of the gossip reporter Elsa Maxwell, who also lived in the Waldorf. Each of their balls had a theme, and if it was India, for example, management wasn’t afraid to put live elephants in the Grand Ballroom.
The place where New York received the rich and powerful of the world
From the beginning, the Waldorf Astoria was the place where the city’s elite lived and celebrated together. But it was also the place where New York welcomed the rich and powerful of the world. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor stayed here, as did Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco. US presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy had permanent residences that they used whenever they came to New York. Roosevelt had a secret elevator from the train tracks that run under the hotel straight to his suite.
The concept of a residence hotel for the upper ten thousand came directly from the founders, the Astor family. William Waldorf Astor, heir to one of the world’s most fabulous fortunes, wanted to keep the spirit of his childhood home around the turn of the century. It should feel like an open house to the New York elite. The Waldorf was, as the urban theorist Rem Koolhaas wrote, a kind of commune of the “richest one percent”.
The commune of the beautiful and the rich
That concept didn’t change when the original Waldorf Astoria on 34th Street had to give way to the newly built Empire State Building and relocate to Park Avenue. The new super hotel with 40 floors, which takes up an entire block, merely expanded the idea of the commune of the beautiful and the rich and, in the spirit of internationalism, included the world’s elite.
The architecture still breathes the decadence of that time. The famous “Pfauenallee” across the building from Park to Lexington Avenue is a sequence of fantasy backdrops: a Roman bath without water, a reception hall made of Tuscan marble with the ornate goldsmith’s clock tower that adorned the old Astor residence Library-like room with white oak paneling and Tiffany reading lamps.
Broadway stars and state guests are nowhere to be found
The audience is, of course, not quite what Ward Morehouse III still remembers. Broadway stars and state guests are nowhere to be found. Obama, for example, is staying for the UN General Assembly at Lotte New York Palace, a modern boutique hotel on Madison Avenue. Instead, on a hot day in the Waldorf you can see business people and tourists in shorts and t-shirts.
The big social events have long been taking place elsewhere. Hedge fund tycoon Stephen Schwarzman rented the Armory on Park Avenue, Manhattan’s old military drill hall, for his birthday. The top event of the year is the Metropolitan Museum Ball. The last major event that Morehouse can still remember here was the 80th birthday of Frank Sinatra in 1995, one of the last prominent residents of the Waldorf.
Super-rich overseas investors will move in
The old times will certainly not come back even after the renovation. But maybe Morehouse is right that converting many units into luxury apartments is bringing back some of the elitist flair. Maybe the super-rich overseas investors who are probably moving in here are actually New York’s true new elite.
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