Famed throughout the world, New York's Waldorf Astoria is quite simply the grandest of all grand hotels. Host to emperors, rajahs, potentates, and plutocrats—not to mention every US president since Grover Cleveland—its name has become synonymous with the epitome of glamour, luxury, and sophistication. The name Waldorf Astoria applied to two different but equally magnificent hotels. The first was the connecting Hotel Waldorf and Astoria Hotel operating at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West Thirty-third Street. It was a Gilded Age pleasure dome created by the Astor family for New York's social elite. The second and present Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue is the ultimate expression of Gotham's Jazz Age extravagance. Vintage photographs herein record the architecture, decoration, and history of these two extraordinary establishments as well as the outsized personalities who created and dwelt within them.
Descended from four generations of American hotel keepers and dwellers, William Alan Morrison is the author of photographic histories of New York's Broadway theaters, the lavish estates of the Philadelphia Main Line, and architects Carrère & Hastings. Though he, of course, was not present, his mother and father held their wedding reception in the Basildon Room of the present Waldorf Astoria.