Told of Anbang’s latest statement, Landmarks Conservancy President Peg Breen said that “their representatives were very clear when they were speaking to us that they did not want any interior landmark designation. If they changed their minds now, that’s very good news.”
Meghan Weatherby, the Art Deco Society’s director of operations, called the Anbang statement “a great step in the right direction. It’s a great movement forward in showing that they are interested in protecting the Art Deco heritage.”
Protection Pushed
Both Breen and Weatherby said they would continue to push for the city to protect the interiors, so that any changes to them would require municipal approval.
Completed in October 1931, the 625-foot (191-meter) building was a pioneer in adapting the skyscraper form to hotel use, according to its 1993 landmark designation. The hotel welcomed every president since Herbert Hoover, who broadcast a welcoming message from the White House that was amplified throughout the building. The State Department, after decades of using the hotel as a home base for U.S. diplomats during the United Nations General Assembly, last year shifted its operations to the nearby New York Palace Hotel following the Waldorf’s acquisition by Anbang.
The hotel’s Peacock Alley is the recreation of the key feature of the original Waldorf Astoria, which was demolished to make room for the Empire State Building. The passageway between the hotel’s Park Avenue entrance and its main lobby is paneled with French burled walnut and leads to what’s been called the lobby’s most iconic feature, a clock built for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.