1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

OldWaldorf Bar Days School of painting, or of sculpture. They may be right. And it is a fact that for many years an independent or– ganization of artists and patrons has been trying to de– velop at least one such school by letting any person who thinks he can paint, or model clay, hang the evidence of his genius, or what not, in a place where a more or less credulous public will be sure of an opportunity to view it and perhaps to buy it-provided its creator can raise the nominal fee demanded for its admission to this vicarious Hall of Fame. I have never heard of an American School of Drink– ing-under that name. And yet there is ample proof that such did once exist. Were the evidence of my own eyes and recollection lacking, excavations made and exhuma– tions resulting during the last days of a long-famous hotel, and subsequent to the demolition of that-in our way of counting time-venerable institution, offer abun– dant proof. As a matter of fact, as I begin this, workmen are carting away the wreckage of what was a famous temple of Bacchus, long known wherever the name "American" conjured, for the thirsty wanderer, a vision of something yellowish or amber or of ruby red in a small but generously brimmed glass. Swallowed at a gulp, that lusty and sometimes uproarious content awakened ap– petite for company of its own kind, until the experi– menter could cry,."Hold, enough!" but never did. If he cried at all, his lament was apt to be, "I can't hold enough!" GLORY THAT W A S Only a little more than a dozen years have rollicked by in more or less arid succession since the American School [ 8)