Onkar G on July 5, 2021 No Comments
Waldorf Astoria Hotel by Schultze & Weaver: New York’s grandest landmark hotel
The Waldorf Astoria Hotel & Towers built-in 1931 on Park Avenue has always been an iconic New York City symbol. The hotel in its early years posed as a home to many of New York’s elite, celebrities worldwide, and royalty and quickly earned the title of ‘the unofficial palace of New York’.
The architects of Shultze & Weaver, an architectural firm that had specialized in luxury hotel design, designed the 625-foot high structure in a sedate and modernist style, which is now known as the Art Deco style. The twin towers clad in elegant limestone have been a New York City Landmark since 1993. The hotel interiors too, are one of the city’s finest Art Deco interiors and gained their own landmark status much later in 2017.
History
Hotels have been essential to New York City since the colonial era. Taverns, lodges, and inns of New Amsterdam, the 17th-century Dutch settlement that came to be called New York in 1664, offered travellers food, drinks, and a place to stay. The Waldorf Astoria marks its beginnings with the Astor family, German immigrants from the town of Waldorf.
Located on the west side of Fifth Avenue, between 33rd & 34th streets, the south building was opened as the Waldorf Hotel in 1893 while the north building known as the Astoria opened in 1897. The divide was the result of a family feud between the two families. Eventually, the two together came to be known as the Waldorf Astoria Hotel that functioned as a single hotel with about 1300 guest rooms and 40 public rooms. It was the largest New York City hotel in its time but certainly not unique among the other hotels in this era.
The New Waldorf Astoria Hotel
The second version of the hotel replaced the thirty-year-old, sixteen-story German Renaissance complex with limestone and a matching ‘Waldorf Gray’ brick building. The Art Deco hotel with classic details and bronze accents was located on the east side of Park Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, just north of the Grand Central Terminal. The site took over an entire Manhattan block and was substantially larger than the original hotel.
The design of the Waldorf Astoria is credited to Lloyd Morgan, a partner at Schultze & Weaver. The architect-designed this new skyscraper hotel to be a hybrid building—a cross between a residential tower and a hotel.
COURTESY – RETHINKINGTHEFUTURE
