1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

OldWaldorf Bar Days make them forget the worry or turmoil of the day's work. There were no screened doors. Anybody could look in, and most every man who entered the Waldorf in those days did look, at least once. It was known all over the country; in mining camps from Mexico to Alaska, it evoked recollections of tastes and odors tha t parched many a throat. As a matter of fact, its fame was world– wide. Visitors to the Old Waldorf during its latter days found difficulty, did they seek to recreate the pictu~e of that great hall where Bacchus so long drew his greatest throngs of pilgrims and devotees, and where such, in turn, drew inspiration of the widest variety boasted by the elective courses offered by the American School of Drinking. Here was long a sort of fountain head. Here, cleverly conceived by masters and put together by experts skilled to such a degree that with eye or a deft motion of a bottle they could gauge the flow of an alcoholic liquid to the fraction of a drop, new drinks were composed, tested, and then offered to tickle jaded palates, or to relieve headaches and other aftermaths of excessive inebriation that had sought relief elsewhere in vain. Not along the whole length of Broadway, from the Battery to the north– ernmost goat-grazed Harlem cliff, could one pounce upon a pick-me-up of such potency a~ members o'f its faculty could deliver, and often did, to the student who was ready to fall at their feet and drink. That pick-me-up, research reveals, consisted of "two dashes of acid or lemon phosphate, one-half a 'jigger of Italian Vermuth, [14] MECCA OF THE THIRSTY PILGRIM