1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days by Albert Stevens Crockett

FOREWORD had no peer. So far, no attempt has been made to recreate in print just what that place was and what it meant. What follows is a study of the old Waldorf Bar and its happen- ings, as representative of a phase of American social life which was once important, yet which-so slight is resem– blance between that Bar and any speakeasy-may be said to have disappeared as completely as the vast enterprise of which it was long one of the most popular and most remu– nerative departments. The author does not assume to be an authority on the composition of drinks or their ejfects-except as an ob– server. But he first saw the old Waldorf Bar about one month after its opening in the autumn of 1897. He had occasion to enter it frequently during the first seventeen years of the century; it was one place where a newspaper reporter could be sure offinding a patron of the hotel whom he wished to interview and who happened to be in no other part of the building. For two years of that time his office was in the hotel and he visited the Bar daily in search of news. In gathering materialfor this book, he has had assistance from many veteran employes of the old Waldorf, some of whom date from the days of the "sit-down" caji, that ran for more than four years. before the brass-rail Bar opened, with which this book is mainly concerned. And among his other collaborators have been regular patrons of the Bar who knew its habitu-is and what went on there.