1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

) OldWaldorf Bar Days

him, was familiarly known to most of a wide acquaintance as "Uncle Bill." A corpulent, cheery figure he was, always ready with a smile and a pleasant greeting-and thirsty! Many of these cocktail-hour patrons were hosts at tables. As a rule, they actually drank cocktails at that time,·Martinis and Manhattans beingmost popular. That was before the "Clover Club" had won in New York temples of thirst a wide but short-lived popularity. Very few fancy drinks were served at cocktail-time. There were many customers, who would stand up to the bar with a group of friends, and before they moved away would gulp down five or six Manhattans or Martinis in succession. A big banquet in the hotel would fill the Barroom at midnight, for whatever they had had up– stairs of cocktails, champagne, and liqueurs, many men must have, in those days, a nightcap. Often, it took several to get them properly "habited" for bed. THE "WALDORF CROWD" During the last ten or fifteen years of its existence, though its mantle was being pa·rted by such popular establishments as James B. Regan's "Forty-second Street Country Club" (as the Knickerbocker Hotel Chapter of the American School of ..Drinking was known), the Belmont Bar, so popular with commuters on the New Haven and New York Central Railroads, and other more convenient hangout~ for the thirsty, what was called "The Waldorf Crowd" was much in evidence in the room after the close of the market. While lots of newspaper readers of the time thought by "Waldorf Crowd" was meant an army of speculators [ 46]