When the Astors Owned New York by Justin Kaplan

“could not have got the like of the first suite of apartments set apart for the most distinguished guests of the hotel. Here is a canopied bed upon a dais, as a king’s should be. Upon this couch shall repose the greatnesses and, looking about them, see many thousands of dollars’ worth of fineries. Think of the joy of being great!” “So numerous were the conveniences,” wrote Albert S. Crockett, a journalist whose beat was New York hotels, “so many and so appealing were the luxuries offered, and so widely were these read about and talked about, that in time, if a man wished to be of any importance when he came to New York, he simply had to stop at the Waldorf.”
    Opening-night charity patrons listened to a concert by Walter Damrosch’s New-York Symphony Orchestra performing selections from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Richard Wagner’s Meistersinger, and, somewhat less predictably, Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre . Then the guests sat down to the supper Boldt’s staff set out for them. It included oysters in béchamel sauce, cutlets of braised sweetbreads, terrapin, various pâtés, and other rich delicacies washed down with champagne and claret punch. Even a last-minute strike by workers in the pantry failed to disrupt the evening: an assistant steward mounted a behind-the-scenes rescue operation and recruited replacement dishwashers from men off the streets.
    Boldt’s opening event established a formula that has never lost its effectiveness: in a setting that invited glittering displays of gowns from Paris and jewels from Tiffany and Cartier, he brought together money, the upper class, fashion, good works, and upscale entertainment. A publicity and public-relations triumph, his opening night, “a brilliant social event,” was the lead story on page one of the next day’s New York Times . There, an article of five thousand words or so spilled over onto page two and listed the names of the more prominent guests, and described what some of them wore. It even included a tribute to the generosity of “Mr. Boldt, a gentleman who does not allow his wonderful energy to obscure his affability.” He saw to it that the Waldorf, and soon after its larger twin, the Astoria, became both temples of pleasure and theaters of cultural and social life in a great city.
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    Jack had threatened at first to get back at his cousin by tearing down his mother’s house and replacing it with a row of stables. It was both gratifying and reasonable for him to expect that a stable, in effect a hotel for horses, would turn away business from William’s hotel next door. Jack’s proposed stable, a millionaire’s weapon in the real-estate and family wars, was clearly intended to be a thumb in William’s eye, but solid money-shrewd sense prevailed. Jack canceled his stable plan, just as he had done with the stable he had planned to build next door to B’Nai Jeshurun and its anguished worshippers. He and his advisers realized that the Waldorf, which was to gross over $4 million its first year, was a profitable venture.
    Through troops of lawyers and accountants on both sides of the partition dividing the Astor estate office on Twenty-sixth Street, Jack negotiated an ad hoc alliance with William. Enlisting the Waldorf’s architect, Henry Hardenbergh, and with Boldt as manager, he planned an abutting $3 million hotel to fill out the entire Fifth Avenue block front and considerable footage westward along Thirty-fourth Street. Harmonious in style with the Waldorf but much larger and several stories taller, Jack’s hotel dwarfed, enveloped, and subsumed his cousin’s, in outward appearance at least, a victory in their long-standing battle. He wanted to name it the Schermerhorn, after his mother’s distinguished Old New York family. William, however, refused to allow even this vicarious honor to his aunt, the most powerful woman in American society. He