1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

HISTORICAL 151 have gone. The great hall where they exercised elbows and appeased arid appetites every day, some of them for more than twenty years, ceased to function one dark day in June, 1919. 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 con– versation and the chatter of the ticker, the air was rent with calls of "Same here!" and "tlere's how!" On the walls are a: few paintings-expensive.looking. Here and there is a piece of m~ssive, if not always orna– mental, statuary. In one corner stands a great rectangular counter, behind which a dozen men in white coats are busy all afternoon and evening ministering to an endless array of thirsts. The crowd surges in. Everyone struggles to get a foot– hold on a brass rail that runs around the bottom of the bar. Sometimes the gang is ten deep, all pressing toward that common goal. On every face is written strong re– solve. Each man pushes forward until some drinker who has been monopolizing a coveted spot falls or otherwise gives way; and then, with something like a shout, the late-comer, if he is a good squirmer or ducker, wiggles into the place thus vacated, t0 claim the drink he yelled for while still a Sheridan's ride away. It should be stressed that the scene described was typi– cal only of hours when the room was overcrowded, as it frequently was toward six o'clock of an afternoon, when men would come in who acted as if they had .only one aim in life, and that was to get outside of a drink, and with no delay. Frequently, as intimated, their chances improved when some "tank" at the barside had filled to overflowing and had to be either carried or led away.