Waldorf Astoria New York
301 Park Avenue | also 540 Lexington Avenue, 111 East 49th Street, 303 Park Avenue | East Midtown | built 2016
Open on the map17 entries
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1929
Lucius Boomer gets a telegram from builder Louis Horowitz proposing a bigger Waldorf
After the original Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue closed in the spring of 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building, its manager Lucius Boomer bought the rights to the hotel's name from the board for a dollar and retired to Florida. Within days a telegram arrived from New York builder Louis Horowitz, offering to put up a new and larger hotel if Boomer would run it. Boomer agreed and came back to the city with the name.
- 1929
The Park Avenue block chosen for the new Waldorf holds the YMCA, American Express and a railroad powerhouse
Louis Horowitz passed over the newer Fifth Avenue hotel district and bought a site in the office-building area just north of Grand Central Terminal, on a landscaped Park Avenue built over the train yards. The full block bounded by 49th and 50th Streets, Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue was then filled by a YMCA, an American Express building and the New York Central powerhouse. The new hotel and its towers replaced all three.
- 1930
The Waldorf's steel frame tops out at 625 feet
The first steel column of the new hotel went up on March 24, 1930, and stone facing began on June 3. The frame reached its full height of 625 feet on October 22, 1930. The building used 27,100 tons of steel, more than the Woolworth Building, along with 11 million bricks and 10,000 metal door frames. Several crews worked at once without always consulting one another, which left inconsistencies in the design.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1931
The new Waldorf-Astoria opens as the world's tallest hotel
The first Waldorf-Astoria stood on Fifth Avenue from 1893 until 1929, when it was torn down for the Empire State Building. Its successor on Park Avenue, a 47-story Art Deco tower by Schultze & Weaver, opened on October 1, 1931, as the tallest and largest hotel in the world. Former president Herbert Hoover and composer Cole Porter lived in its Waldorf Towers for decades.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1931
Critic Kenneth Murchison recalls that the Waldorf's first design bristled with Gothic spear points
Writing in 1931, the architect and critic Kenneth Murchison described how designer Lloyd Morgan of Schultze & Weaver first dressed the twin-towered hotel in Gothic ornament, with spear points rising over the facades. Morgan later stripped the Gothic detail and strengthened the vertical lines. The result was a restrained Art Deco hotel in gray limestone with matching brick above, far quieter than the Chrysler or Daily News buildings a few blocks away.
- 1931
Wealthy guests can arrive by private railroad car on a siding beneath the new Waldorf
The architects took advantage of the Grand Central tracks running under Park Avenue by building a siding directly beneath the hotel. Wealthy guests who wanted privacy could arrive below street level in their own railroad cars and enter the hotel or the Towers unnoticed by the press or the public. Above ground, a wide mid-block driveway under the Towers let cars drop off passengers and turn around without circling the block.
- 1939
Louis Rigal's Wheel of Life mosaic of 148,000 marble tiles greets Waldorf visitors
Since 1939 the Waldorf lobby has held an 18-foot mosaic called Wheel of Life, the work of the French artist Louis Rigal. It is made of 148,000 hand-cut marble tiles from around the world and follows a human life from birth to death. When the hotel closed in 2017 for its conversion into condominiums, the mosaic was being considered for landmark protection.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1947
Forty-eight film executives meet at the Waldorf and vow not to employ the Hollywood Ten
After a closed-door meeting of forty-eight motion-picture executives at the Waldorf-Astoria, Motion Picture Association president Eric Johnston issued a two-page press release on November 25, 1947. Studio heads including Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn and Samuel Goldwyn took part. The Waldorf Statement said the studios would discharge or suspend the Hollywood Ten, cited for contempt of Congress, and would not knowingly hire a Communist.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1949
Shostakovich and Soviet delegates attend a peace conference at the Waldorf as anti-Stalinists picket
Between March 27 and 29, 1949, the Waldorf hosted the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace as the Cold War deepened. Organized by the American Communist Party, it drew Soviet figures including Andrey Vyshinsky, the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the writer Alexander Fadeyev. Anti-Stalinist intellectuals, among them Irving Howe, Dwight Macdonald, Mary McCarthy and Robert Lowell, picketed outside.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1949
Conrad Hilton takes over management of the Waldorf Astoria
Hotelier Conrad Hilton acquires management rights to the hotel from its owners. Hilton Hotels Corporation later buys the Waldorf Astoria outright in 1972, beginning more than four decades of Hilton ownership before the 2014 sale to China's Anbang Insurance Group.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
Mazar and Yadin buy four Dead Sea Scrolls at the Waldorf for $250,000
A Wall Street Journal advertisement put four of the Dead Sea Scrolls up for sale on June 1, 1954. On July 1 they reached the Waldorf-Astoria in New York after delicate negotiations, accompanied by Mar Samuel and two other people. Professor Benjamin Mazar and Yigael Yadin, son of Professor Eleazar Sukenik, bought them for $250,000 and took them to Jerusalem.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1959
Guy Lombardo's New Year's Eve broadcasts settle into the Waldorf ballroom
By 1959 the Waldorf's ballroom had become the annual home of Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians for live New Year's Eve broadcasts. The programs ran on CBS until 1976, reached listeners worldwide and always closed at midnight with Auld Lang Syne. Time observed that Americans would not believe the new year had begun until Lombardo announced it from the hotel.
“…the annual host for live broadcasts from the ballroom by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians Orchestra…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1981
IBM unveils its first Personal Computer at the Waldorf
On August 12, 1981, IBM's Don Estridge unveiled the IBM 5150 Personal Computer at the Waldorf. The base model sold for $1,565 and offered 16 kilobytes of memory but no disk drive, and VisiCalc spreadsheet software and the EasyWriter word processor were its two programs. Equipping it with a display, two diskette drives and a printer pushed the bill up by nearly $3,000.
Source: ibm.com
- 1993
The city designates the Waldorf Astoria's exterior a landmark
New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission protects the Art Deco exterior of Schultze and Weaver's 47-story hotel. In 2017 the commission goes further, designating roughly 62,000 square feet of the hotel's ground-through-fourth-floor interior spaces as landmarks as well.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
China's Anbang Insurance buys the Waldorf for $1.95 billion
Anbang Insurance Group purchases the hotel for $1.95 billion, at the time the highest price ever paid for a hotel. Anbang closes the Waldorf for renovation on March 1, 2017, and after Anbang goes bankrupt in 2020, successor Dajia Insurance Group takes over ownership of the hotel.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
The city landmarks the Waldorf's grand public rooms days after the hotel closes for conversion
The last event in the Grand Ballroom was a charity gala for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on February 28, 2017, with Stevie Wonder performing, and the hotel closed the next day. On March 7 the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to protect the interiors of many public spaces, about 62,000 square feet. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was then hired to renovate the building while preserving those rooms.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2025
The Waldorf reopens after eight years of reconstruction
Anbang Insurance Group bought the hotel in 2014 for $1.95 billion, then a record price for a hotel. It closed on March 1, 2017, for a renovation that turned the upper floors into condominiums and kept 375 hotel rooms, and it reopened under Hilton on July 15, 2025.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Waldorf Astoria New YorkWikipedia
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