Waldorf-Astoria

This is a celebrity biography about a great hotel — in fact, for millions of people across the land and countless more around the world, it is America’s most famous hotel. Now approaching its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2006 on its Park Avenue site, The Waldorf-Astoria has been home to kings, magnates, presidents and many of the greatest cultural talents of the Twentieth Century. General Douglas MacArthur chose to retire in the Waldorf Towers; Cole Porter lived in suite 33A for many years, which Frank Sinatra paid one million dollars a year to live in after Porter died. “The grand cities of the world have their grand hotels, the bed-and-breakfasts for the mighty and the moneyed. Ward Morehouse III explores one of New York City’s grandest in The Waldorf-Asrtoria: America’s Gilded Dream … Morehouse writes of pleasures and scandals, of the hard facts of running a hotel and of its romance. The hotel comes off well in the hands of its appreciative Boswell and one will find “The Waldorf-Astoria” to be a pleasant buffet.” – The New York Times, Sunday Book Review Section