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