Fans of New York City's storied Waldorf-Astoria are rushing to fit one last stay at the hotel into their schedules before it closes for a three-year renovation and redevelopment.
The hotel closes Wednesday and will reopen with fewer rooms for let and more condominiums for sale. The hotel’s owner, Chinese holding company Anbang Insurance Co., said the Art Deco public areas would be restored.
New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission is scheduled to decide whether to designate a long list of items within the property qualify as interior landmarks, from the grand ballroom to the “wheel of life” mosaic above the Park Avenue entrance..
The Waldorf opened in 1931 as the largest, tallest and most expensive hotel ever built, with 2,200 rooms.
“It’s the kind of place that, over a however-many-decade run, people had emotional attachments to,” Shelley Clark, who was the Waldorf’s publicist from 1999 to 2006, told the New York Times. “People made memories there. They got married there. They celebrated special occasions there. If you were a debutante, you made your debut there. It had a multi-, multigenerational impact.”
