Landmarks Preservation Commission January 5, 1993; Designation List 248 LP-1812 WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, 301-319 Park Avenue (a/k/a 538-556 Lexington Avenue), Borough of Manhattan. Built 1929-31; architects Schultze & Weaver (Lloyd Morgan, designer). Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 1304, Lot 1. On September 11, 1990, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 12). The hearing was continued to December 11, 1990 (Item No. 2). Both hearings were duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Three witnesses spoke in favor of designation; two letters were received in support of designation. There were no speakers against the proposed designation. The owners have subsequently indicated that they support the proposed designation. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS Summary The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and Towers, which recently celebrated its 60th anniversary on Park Avenue, was built in 1929-31 to be the second home of an internationally known, hundred-year-old New York establishment. Unlike its palatial predecessor on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, the new Waldorf combined a transient hotel and a related but separate residential tower into a 625-foot-high skyscraper, one of the city's tallest at the time, located in the major new skyscraper office building district developing around Park Av enue near Grand Central Terminal. The architect of the hotel and towers, Lloyd Morgan of the firm of Schultze & Weaver, designed the complex in a sedate but handsome version of the modernistic style now generally referred to as Art Deco, adapting the skyscraper form and an up-to-date look to a conservative traditional establishment. The chief elements of the Waldorf s design include its modernistic massing as a twin-towered skyscraper; the gray limestone base with matching, specially made "Waldorf Gray" brick above; vertical rows of windows and modernistic spandrels; and bronze entryways, marquees, lanterns, and other ornament. Since opening, the hotel and the Towers have been home to some of the world's most famous figures, including presidents, kings and other potentates. The Waldorf-Astoria, continuing to serve as "New York's Unofficial Palace" (as it was once dubbed by the New York Times), remains one of the city's great hotels and major social establishments, and among the handsomest, if most sedate, of the city's Art Deco skyscrapers. Its great modernistic twin towers still form a very visible part of the skyline of midtown Manhattan.

The Waldorf-Astoria The Waldorf Hotel opened in 1893 with a benefit concert of the New York Symphony The history of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Orchestra, conducted by Walter Damrosch, that begins with the history of the Astor family, attracted society figures from New York Boston German immigrants from the town of Walldorf.1 ' ' Philadelphia, and Chicago. Under the The family's vast wealth originated in the fur management of George Boldt, formerly of the trade, but was consolidated by the acquisition of Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, the Waldorf soon cheap farmland on the outskirts of early became known as a gathering place for the city's nineteenth-century New York that later became society, a successor in that capacity to the Astors' valuable midtown real estate. private homes. Christened "New York's unofficial One such piece of farmland, a rural tract palace" by the New York Times, 6 the hotel became crossed by Sunfish Creek when acquired by not only a residence for visitors to the city, but William Backhouse Astor in 1827, evolved into a also a social facility for members of prominent substantial piece of Midtown Manhattan including New York families, people who formerly would the intersection of Fifth A venue and 34th Street. 2 have entertained guests only at home, but did so By the 1850s, this part of Fifth Avenue was lined now at the Wa

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