1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

OldWaldorf Bar Days the names of certain of them made the first page of the newspapers almost every day. They were, in their way, giants, and they took their ease in a Gargantuan way. Such of their performances as were worth while from an historical standpoint have been recorded in books, and are now no concern of mine. My interest lies in what they drank. For, whatever his other purposes, a man almost invariably did at least one thing when he entered the Waldorf Bar: he drank. More often than not it might be said, "Good God, how he drank!" And sometimes, "And what!" Many of that noble army of gallant drinkers I knew by name; many others I knew by sight. The majority have gone. The great hall where they guzzled every day, some of them for more than twenty years, ceased to func– tion one dark day in January, 1920. Only the name of the Waldorf Bar survives. That, and its traditions. But while the light holds, let me try to recreate it, and to limn the shapes of some of those who went surging in and out, while, above the roar of conversation and the chatter of the ticker, the air was rent with calls of "Same here!" and "Here's how!" On the walls are a few paintings-expensive-looking. Here and there is a piece of massive, if not always orna– mental, statuary. In one corner stands a great rectangu– lar counter, behind which a dozen men in white coats are busy all afternoon and eyening ministering to an endless array of thirsts. In the center of the space the bar en– closes is a high refrigerator table, its top graced by the figures of a bull and a bear, between which is a tiny lamb, all in bronze. Between the two emblems of Wall Street [ I 2] _