The American Psychoanalytic Association has had a long history of meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in December, and I guess we are all wondering what the change of schedule will mean. As I said in last year's pre-December article, New York is a city of constant change. For our last Christmas season at the Waldorf (December 19–23, 2001), I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the changes that have taken place during the rise of New York City and of the Waldorf-Astoria.
(Much of the research for this section was drawn from the PBS series “The American Experience: New York,” directed by Ric Burns.)
Unusual in that it was established for commercial gain and not religious freedom, the city was established by the Dutch in 1609 as “New Amsterdam.” It was later renamed “New York,” after the Duke of York, when it was seized by the British. The city is small — some 370 square miles make up the five boroughs — and home to the most divergent population in the world. More languages are spoken in New York than in any other city in the world.
New York's population exploded in both number and diversity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Immigrants from all over were initially funneled into “Crystal Garden,” a state-run depot at the lower end of Manhattan. It proved inadequate to the volume, and construction was begun in 1890 to create a port of entry out of an abandoned ammunition dump off the coast. Completed in 1900, Ellis Island would provide entry to the 12 million people who came to the U.S. through New York over the next thirty years. One-third of these immigrants settled in New York City, primarily in Manhattan, and they packed the Lower East Side. By 1909, 40 percent of the city's population was foreign-born. There were enormous clashes of cultures, but the proximity also led to familiarity, cooperation, and intermarriage.
Construction of the subway — not the first, but the most extensive in the world — with its five-cent fare, regardless of distance traveled, allowed that population to spread throughout the five boroughs. Electrified, rather than steam-run, trains meant tunnel connections from the island to the mainland. Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Station were built to receive the travelers. Grand Central would later serve to bring travelers from all four corners of the U.S. directly to the Waldorf.
The city grew out and up. In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened and the vertical city was under way. (The view from this bridge as one walks toward Manhattan is considered by many to be the most beautiful in the city.) Granite foundations, electric elevators, and steel frame (rather than wall-based) construction revolutionized building construction, giving birth to the skyscrapers that so defined the city. The first was the eleven-story “Tower Building,” nicknamed the “idiotic building” by people who came to watch construction during thunderstorms, expecting collapse. Corporations, moving in increasing numbers into the city, built other tall buildings, which became corporate symbols. By the mid-1920s these had as many as fifty stories. The Chrysler Building (my favorite) beat out its competitor, the Bank of Manhattan, by throwing up a 185-foot spike that had been secretly assembled within the building. After the stock market crash of 1929, demolition at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street began for construction of the Empire State Building, tallest building in the world at eighty-five stories.
When World War I began, New York City was $3 billion in debt to investors from England and Europe. At the end of the war, the city was owed that much and rivaled London as a financial capital. Industry began mass production, shifting from demand-creating production to production-created demand. Consumerism had arrived, and advertising would be its vehicle. New York, home to advertising, radio, and publishing, became the center of the mass media culture.
This brought artists from all over. Harlem became the first concentration of African-American creative minds in the country and was home to some of the most talented artists, writers, and performing artists of its day. Broadway became the birthplace of a new kind of musical theater, bringing together black and white, opera and jazz, drama, song-and-dance, slang and sophisticated wordplay. If the '20s were wild, in New York City they were extravagantly wild.
In fact, the city's wildness both fascinated and disgusted much of the rest of the country. This intense dislike is said to have contributed to the landslide loss in Governor Al Smith's run for President. Smith was a New York poster boy: He came from a foreign (Irish) population; he was Catholic, self-educated, and a social reformer who spoke with a strong New York accent. In Oklahoma, his campaign route was strewn with burning crosses. Smith was stunned. The country's love-hate relationship with New York City has always included this element of provincialism in its cosmopolitan citizens. (I came to appreciate my own brand of provincialism when I first left New York City to attend graduate school in another state and was flabbergasted when the New York news wasn't reported between the international news and the state news.)
The city continued to change and be the center of change. John J. Raskob, a financial giant and friend of Al Smith, came up with a plan that banks could make loans to small or “margin” investors, bringing the Wall Street stock market (started in 1772) to the general public.
(Most of the research for this section was drawn from Ward Morehouse Ill's delightful book The Waldorf-Astoria: America's Gilded Dream (M. Evans & Co., 1991).)
The building that was demolished at 34th and Fifth to make way for the Empire State Building was the original Waldorf-Astoria. According to Vanessa Letts's 1997 book Manhattan, John Jacob Astor bought a large piece of Manhattan farmland for $20,000 in 1827.
Randi Finger, Ph.D., is a child/adolescent and adult psychoanalyst in private practice in Washington, D.C., and an associate instructor for the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. She chairs the APsaA's Ad Hoc Committee on Outreach for Scientific and Educational Programs.
His two sons each built a mansion on this property in 1857, and the Astor mansions became the center of “society,” also known as “the Four Hundred” for the number of “coattails” that could fit into Mrs. Astors ballroom.
Out of spite for his overbearing aunt, William Waldorf Astor turned his mansion into a grand hotel, the Waldorf, which opened on March 13, 1893. In its first summer, it held forty guests within its 450 rooms, attended by 970 hotel employees! William's aunt responded by turning her mansion into the 550 rooms of the Astoria and moving to the Upper East Side. Eventually the two hotels merged; service and amenities were impeccable at this society hotel, whose halls were nicknamed “Peacock Alley” for the high fashion parading through.
Oscar Tschirsky, “Oscar of the Waldorf,” was hired as maitre d'hotel two months before the 1893 opening and remained with the hotel through its 1931 move and until he retired in 1943. In 1900, rooms were $5 a day on the American Plan and up to $30 for the largest suites.
The Waldorf site was sold to the Empire State Building project in 1929, and the hotel moved to a faster-growing residential and commercial part of town. The new hotel, completed in 1931, was built for $40 million above the railroad tracks where it now stands: between Park and Madison Avenues and 49th and 50th Streets. It was constructed on pillars made of alternating layers of asbestos, iron, and lead, which were spread between the tracks and embedded in rock. The new Waldorf-Astoria was a skyscraper and a masterpiece of art deco; with furnishings from Europe and a lobby boasting a 4,000-pound bronze clock and the murals of José Maria Sert. In the face of the depression and its considerable competition, it immediately went bankrupt.
But not out of business. For many decades, it was the place to stay in New York. It was the scene of fabulous parties and grand musical events. It was a permanent residence for a number of luminaries and home away from home to others: artists like Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra, heads of state like Herbert Hoover and Nikita Khrushchev, and royalty including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Many of the wealthy brought their own private trains into Grand Central and through to the train tracks that ran below the Waldorf, from which they would emerge by elevators into the lobby.
Big bands and musicals, including Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve performances, were broadcast “direct from the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria.” Elsa Maxwell lived in the Towers. She was famous for her parties, particularly the “April in Paris” balls she threw with Tschirsky's heir, Claudius Phillippe, She rode into one party on the back of an elephant! It was rumored that from her suite, she ran the business part of one of the most exclusive bordellos in the city.
Among other interesting tales reported in Morehead's book were a guest book for pets, who signed with paws or tails, and Henry Kissinger removing all the antiques from his suite and replacing them with thirty-six desks for his staff.