Waldorf-Astoria Kitchen: "Hotel and Restaurant Workers" circa 1963 AFL-CIO

• Report rights infringement
• published: 05 Feb 2013
• views: 7176

more at http://quickfound.net/ Public domain film from the Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf-Astoria_Hotel The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is a luxury hotel in New York City. It has been housed in two historic landmark buildings in New York. The first, designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, was on the Fifth Avenue site of the Empire State Building. The present building at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan is a 47-story, 190.5 m (625 ft) Art Deco landmark, designed by architects Schultze and Weaver and dating from 1931. Lee S Jablin, Harman Jablin Architects, fully renovated and upgraded the historical property to its original grandeur during the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. The Waldorf Astoria New York is a member of Hilton's Luxury and Lifestyle Brands along with Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts and Conrad Hotels & Resorts. The Waldorf Astoria was the first hotel to offer room service, making a huge impact for the future of the hotel industry. The hotel was branded as The Waldorf=Astoria, with a double hyphen, but originally a single hyphen was employed between "Waldorf" and "Astoria," as recalled by a popular expression and song, "Meet Me at the Hyphen." The equal sign was chosen to signify the equality between the Waldorf and Astor families. It also visually represents "Peacock Alley," the hallway between the two hotels that once stood where the Empire State building now stands today. This branding was discontinued shortly after its introduction. The modern hotel has three American and classic European restaurants, and a beauty parlor located off the main lobby. Several boutiques surround the lobby. A boutique "hotel within a hotel" housed on the upper floors is known as The Waldorf Towers. The hotel has its own railway platform as part of Grand Central Terminal, used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, James Farley, Adlai Stevenson, and Douglas MacArthur, among others. An elevator large enough for Franklin D. Roosevelt's automobile provides access to the platform. Its name is ultimately derived from Walldorf in Germany and the prominent German-American Astor family that originated there... An Astor family feud contributed to the events which led to the construction of the original Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue. It started as two hotels: one owned by William Waldorf Astor, whose 13-story Waldorf Hotel was opened in 1893 and the other owned by his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, called the Astoria Hotel and opened four years later in 1897, four stories higher. William Astor, motivated in part by a dispute with his aunt, Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, built the original Waldorf Hotel next door to her house, on the site of his father's mansion and today's Empire State Building. The hotel was built to the specifications of founding proprietor George Boldt; he and his wife Louise had become known as the owners and operators of the Bellevue, an elite boutique hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Broad Street, subsequently expanded and renamed the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. Boldt continued to own the Bellevue (and, later, the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel) even after his relationship with the Astors blossomed. Engraved 1916 letterhead of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia including vignettes of that hotel as well as those of both the Waldorf and Astoria Hotels in New York all of which were then operating under the management of George Boldt. William Astor's construction of a hotel next to his aunt's house worsened his feud with her, but, with Boldt's help, John Astor persuaded his mother to move uptown. John Astor then built the Astoria Hotel and leased it to Boldt. The hotels were initially built as two separate structures, but Boldt planned the Astoria so it could be connected to the Waldorf by Peacock Alley. The combined Waldorf-Astoria became the largest hotel in the world at the time, while maintaining the original Waldorf's high standards... Waldorf salad — a salad made with apples, walnuts, celery, grapes, and mayonnaise or a mayonnaise-based dressing — was first created in 1896 at the Waldorf in New York City by Oscar Tschirky, who was the maître d'hôtel, and the same salad was referred to in the British comedy Fawlty Towers...