A Complete History of the Waldorf Astoria New York

<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1582827" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Waldorf-Astoria-New-York-Peacock-Alley_-2.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="647" data-caption='The Waldorf Astoria has, at long last, reopened. <span class=”media-credit”>VERO SUH</span>’>

New York City isn’t short on historic landmarks. But for the past eight years, it has been missing one of its most glamorous treasures: the Waldorf Astoria. Famously opened by feuding cousins, William Waldorf Astor and John Jacob Astor IV, in the 19th century, the Waldorf Astoria started as two neighboring hotels on Fifth Avenue in the late 1800s. From the beginning, the Waldorf Astoria attracted the world’s elite, playing host to benefit events attended by New York socialites and counting European royalty among its guests.

Yet it wasn’t until the hotel moved to its present-day location on Park Avenue that its legacy was secured (the Empire State Building now occupies the original site). When the Waldorf Astoria reopened in 1931, it set a new standard for hospitality with its Art Deco design and palatial ballroom, which has hosted events attended by everyone from President John F. Kennedy to Princess Grace of Monaco to the singer Prince, during a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

After closing the hotel for renovations in 2017, the Waldorf Astoria New York officially reopened its doors in the summer of 2025, welcoming guests to enjoy longer stays in one of its 375 rooms and suites or shorter experiences at its two restaurants and cocktail bar. The remodel, which cost a reported $2 billion, was spearheaded by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (the architecture firm behind One World Trade Center), with interiors by Pierre-Yves Rochon (his long list of luxury hotel designs includes the Savoy in London and the Four Seasons George V in Paris). But it also involved working with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and ArtCare Conservation to honor the hotel’s rich history and even restore some of its most impressive pieces. The result is a nod to the Waldorf Astoria’s Gilded Age glamour that intertwines Art Deco details with contemporary luxuries like marble bathrooms and Frette linens.

As the Waldorf Astoria New York ushers in a new era, we’re taking a look back at its more than 125 years of history. 

A Family Feud On Fifth Avenue

Before there was the Waldorf Astoria, there was just the Waldorf—a lavish hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, whose construction was initiated in 1890 by William Waldorf Astor. The only son of financier John Jacob Astor III, William ordered the hotel to be constructed on the site of his late father’s former mansion, which also happened to be next door to the mansion of his aunt, socialite Caroline Schermerhorn Astor (“the Mrs. Astor”).

By the time the Waldorf opened in 1893, the two branches of the Astor family were said to be enmeshed in a feud, which motivated William’s cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, to build the competing Astoria Hotel on the site where his mother (the aforementioned Caroline Astor) formerly resided. Like the Waldorf, the Astoria was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and furnished with European antiques by hotelier George Boldt and his wife, Louise. Among the Astoria’s impressive interiors was a series of murals by American painter Edward Emerson Simmons. The murals, which depict the four seasons and the 12 months of the year, were one of the landmarked pieces restored by ArtCare Conservation during the Waldorf Astoria’s recent renovation, and can currently be found in the Silver Corridor.

Perhaps to eclipse his cousin, John planned for the Astoria to be larger than the Waldorf when construction began in 1895. However, when the Astoria opened in 1897, management convinced the family to merge the hotels into the Waldorf Astoria (then known as the Waldorf-Astoria). The largest hotel of its time, the Waldorf Astoria was known for its extravagant balls and dinner events that drew in high-profile figures like the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies and visiting royalty. 

To connect the two hotels, an ornate marble corridor was built so that guests could pass between buildings without being exposed to New York City’s elements. Because it became a place where onlookers could find society’s most fashionable members strutting through, the corridor was dubbed “Peacock Alley” by the New York press—a term that not only stuck, but has been incorporated into Waldorf Astoria properties around the world. 

At the reopened Waldorf Astoria New York, Peacock Alley is represented in two ways. First, through a marble hallway modeled after the original corridor’s likeness that you’ll come across through the hotel’s Park Avenue entrance. Then, there’s the lobby, a more extravagant take on Peacock Alley that is truly the heart of the hotel. Designed in an Art Deco style, this new Peacock Alley features a lounge area and a bar area that are separate from the hotel’s check-in space. It also displays one of the hotel’s oldest pieces: the 1893 World’s Fair clock. Queen Victoria originally commissioned the timepiece as a way to showcase English craftsmanship at the World’s Fair in Chicago, and it was then purchased by the Astors for the original hotel on Fifth Avenue. The eight-foot-tall clock includes portraits of Queen Victoria and U.S. presidents George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland, and it features a gold miniature of the Statue of Liberty at the top (the latter was added in 1902, when it was gifted to John Jacob Astor IV by the French government). As the centerpiece of the lobby, the World’s Fair piece has been a meeting spot for generations of visiting guests and New Yorkers, inspiring the phrase, “Meet me at the clock.”

The Waldorf Astoria Moves North

With competition from newer hotels, the Astor family sold the Waldorf Astoria in 1929, and it was then razed to make way for the Empire State Building. Following the social scene that was shifting further north, the hotel moved to its current location on Park Avenue between 49th and 50th streets. At the time of its opening in 1931, the Waldorf Astoria New York was the tallest, largest and most expensive hotel in the world, standing at 625 feet and covering an entire city block. Its debut was so highly anticipated that the hotel’s opening night celebrations began with a radio broadcast address by then-President Herbert Hoover.

The newer, grander hotel was created by the architecture firm Schultze & Weaver, with an Art Deco design whose exterior was designated a landmark by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1993. More than a dozen interiors were later designated landmarks in 2017, including Peacock Alley and a 148,000-piece marble tile mosaic by French artist Louis Rigal, as well as the Grand Ballroom, Silver Corridor, Jade Room, Astor Room and Basildon Room event spaces.

<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1582836" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/GettyImages-517331282.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="Actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller attending the April in Paris ball, at the Waldorf-Astoria, which benefits the French Hospital and several philanthropic French-American organizations in New York City.” width=”970″ height=”1193″ data-caption=’Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller attending at the April in Paris ball at the Waldorf-Astoria. <span class=”media-credit”>Bettmann Archive</span>’>

Among these event spaces, the Grand Ballroom holds the most historical significance to the hotel for its many galas and benefits (one smaller dinner in 1946 was said to have raised more than $250,000). Complete with a stage large enough for a full orchestra, the Grand Ballroom was the venue for one of the first Met Gala dinners in the 1940s, held the first Tony Awards ceremony in 1947 and hosted a Monte Carlo-themed charity ball where Prince Rainier Iii and Grace Kelly celebrated their engagement in 1956. The Waldorf Astoria also helped to establish the April in Paris Ball in 1952, which was staged in the Grand Ballroom until 1959, and included famous guests like Marilyn Monroe, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and then-Senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. The annual gala was aimed at improving Franco-American relations and raising money for U.S. and French charities, and its over-the-top themes during the years featured fashion shows by Givenchy, ballet performances, and a Parisian circus with Marlene Dietrich as ringmaster. As the years went by, the Grand Ballroom continued to evolve, hosting the inaugural Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1986. The annual event would continue to take place at the Waldorf Astoria on over a dozen occasions until 2011, seeing celebrated guests and performances including Chuck Berry, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. 

In 1949, hotel magnate Conrad Hilton acquired the Waldorf Astoria for $3 million, having long-since declared it “the greatest of them all.” Under Hilton’s ownership, the Waldorf Astoria underwent several smaller renovations in the 1950s and 1960s before a full, $150 million renovation in the 1980s. In 2014, a Chinese insurance firm, Anbang, purchased the Waldorf Astoria for $1.95 billion, announcing plans to renovate the more than 1,400-room hotel and establish private condominiums. (The Hilton hospitality company continues to operate the hotel under a management contract.) When the hotel closed its doors for renovations in 2017, it was originally scheduled to reopen in 2021. However, the 2020 pandemic, paired with a transfer in ownership to Chinese insurance firm Dajia (following Anbang declaring bankruptcy), put the property behind schedule, and the Waldorf Astoria finally reopened in 2025, with 375 guest rooms and suites, as well as an additional 372 private residences.

The Hotel’s Many Famous Faces

In addition to its extravagant balls, the Waldorf Astoria played a role in historical events and international politics, with the Fifth Avenue hotel holding the first hearings of the United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 (John Jacob Astor IV was among the passengers killed). When the United Nations selected New York City as its permanent headquarters in 1946, the present-day Waldorf Astoria became the preferred hotel for UN delegates. It also hosted significant occasions such as a post-World War II Big Four conference in 1946, a dinner for Queen Elizabeth II during her first state visit to the U.S. in 1957 and a meeting between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Pope Paul VI during his first papal visit to the United States in 1965.

A popular gathering place for U.S. politicians and world leaders, the hotel has played host in some way to every U.S. president from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama. Notably, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited the Waldorf Astoria, he used a private underground railway that ran from Grand Central Station to the hotel’s basement. Though the railway is no longer in use, the newly renovated hotel decided to pay tribute to this piece of history with its Lex Yard restaurant, which contains a private dining space named after the secret railway platform, Track 61.

The hotel was also a popular spot for Hollywood royalty and cultural icons, welcoming everyone from Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Bennett to Andy Warhol and Muhammad Ali. Many of the Waldorf Astoria’s luxury suites were home to famous figures over the years. Herbert Hoover lived in the hotel’s Presidential Suite for over 30 years, while celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Frank Sinatra lived in suites for shorter periods of time. Many years later, the hotel’s historical rooms became a playground of sorts for socialite sisters (and Conrad Hilton’s great-granddaughters), Paris and Nicky Hilton, who lived in a suite with their family throughout much of their childhood in the 1980s and 1990s.

Among the Waldorf Astoria’s lengthy list of long-term guests, it was Cole Porter who had the most lasting impact. The American composer and lyricist called a 10-room suite at the hotel his home from 1934 until his death in 1964, and it is where he reportedly wrote many of his famous works on a Steinway piano gifted to him by the hotel’s management. Following its own restoration, Porter’s piano is now back at the Waldorf Astoria (just across from the World’s Fair clock in the Peacock Alley lobby), where it’s used to play live music for guests in the evenings.

Redefining Hospitality 

Of course, part of what made the Waldorf Astoria so celebrated from the beginning was its dedication to service. The original structure on Fifth Avenue was the first hotel to have electricity throughout and to offer private bathrooms. It was one of the first hotels to admit women without escorts and the first major hotel to hire women as chefs. When the Waldorf Astoria moved further uptown, it continued to advance the hospitality industry by inventing the concept of room service in 1931. At the time, staying in hotels meant that guests were required to dine in restaurants, but in an effort to offer its guests more privacy, the Waldorf Astoria began offering an in-room dining service, where uniformed waiters brought the hotel’s refined cuisine right to their guests’ doors.

The hotel is also the birthplace of several culinary dishes. Eggs Benedict and the Waldorf salad are said to have been created by the maître d’hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, at the original Waldorf Astoria on Fifth Avenue, and red velvet cake became a popular dessert once the hotel began serving it in the 1930s. (Modern takes on all three dishes can be found at the Waldorf Astoria’s new restaurant, Lex Yard, which is helmed by chef Michael Anthony.)

With the completed renovations, the Waldorf Astoria New York is ready to define the next era of luxury service while still honoring the history that made it world-famous in the first place. In addition to its guest rooms and suites, the hotel’s Grand Ballroom, meeting spaces and amenities (a fitness center and 20,000-square-foot Guerlain spa are set to debut later this year) offer plenty of exclusive experiences. But as a fixture of New York, the hotel has prioritized creating a level of inclusivity, too, welcoming New Yorkers and visitors alike to enjoy a meal in one of its restaurants, grab a drink in Peacock Alley and become part of the next chapter.