New York - Walfdorf Astoria Hotel, General Electric & Citicorp Buildings

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Waldorf Astoria Hotel, General Electric and Citicorp Buildings
• Publisher:  New York Dawn & Dusk series / Impact
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s):  n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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UK (incl. IOM, CI & BFPO): 99p

Europe: £1.60

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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The Waldorf Astoria New York 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 New York is recognized as a Historic Hotel of America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Waldorf Astoria was the first hotel to offer room service, making a huge impact for the future of the hotel industry.

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.^[4]

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.

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.^[5]

The Waldorf Astoria is historically significant for transforming the contemporary hotel, then a facility for transients, into a social center of the city as well as a prestigious destination for visitors and a part of popular culture.^[5] The Waldorf-Astoria was influential in advancing the status of women, who were admitted singly without escorts. Founding proprietor Boldt became wealthy and prominent internationally, if not so much a popular celebrity as his famous employee, Oscar Tschirky, ""Oscar of the Waldorf."" Boldt built one of America's most ambitious houses, Boldt Castle, on one of the Thousand Islands. George Boldt's wife, Louise Kehrer Boldt, was influential in evolving the idea of the grand urban hotel as a social center, particularly in making it appealing to women as a venue for social events.

When the new Waldorf Astoria skyscraper was built over air rights of the New York State Realty and Terminal Company on Park Avenue, a cast of well reputed furnishers and decorators was assembled to lend the new hotel a grand yet domestic atmosphere. Former Waldorf manager Lucius M. Boomer had retired to Florida after the original Waldorf-Astoria buildings were demolished, but he retained exclusive rights to the name, which he transferred to the new hotel. Boomer died in an airplane crash in 1947 and Conrad Hilton bought The Waldorf Astoria in 1949.^[6]

The General Electric Building, also known as 570 Lexington Avenue, is a historic 50-floor, 640-foot (200 m)-tall, skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States, at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street).^[2] Originally known as the RCA Victor Building when designed in 1931 by John W. Cross of Cross and Cross, and sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion with the later GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The building was deeded by RCA to GE before construction was completed.

It backs up to the low Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue and shares the same salmon brick color. But from Lexington, the building is an insistently tall 50-floor stylized Gothic tower with its own identity, a classic Art Deco visual statement of suggested power through simplification. The base contains elaborate, generous masonry, architectural figural sculpture, and on the corner above the main entrance, a conspicuous corner clock with the curvy GE logo and a pair of silver disembodied forearms. The crown of the building is a dynamic-looking burst of Gothic tracery, which is supposed to represent radio waves, and is lit from within at night.

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: rest of the world

sub-theme=north america

county/ country=usa

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted