1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

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OLD WALDORF-ASTORIA BAR BOOK

guage of my tribe." John W . Gates, of "Betcha-a-million" fame, and his bosom friend, Colonel "Ike" Ellwood, appeared in the Bar, occasionally, though Gates' favorite hangout was the Men's Cafe, across the hall. With them when he came to New York almost invariably trailed Colonel John Lam– bert, sometime warden of Joliet, Ill., penitentiary, but president of the American Steel & Wire Company at the time of the formation of the Steel Trust. In the Gates aura, too, one would discover John A. Drake and the latter's brother-in-law, Theodore P. Shonts-that was before he was made chairman of the Panama Canal Commis~ion­ and Loyall L . Smith, a millionaire who had once been a Chicago newsboy. And while its owner was a strict tee– totaler, the round face of Diamond Jim Brady, brass fit– tings salesman, gormand and dinner-party impresario, ~ould be seen circulating among the crowd, as he button– holed this or that "Big Feller," the orb illuminated by forty to a hundred carats of diamonds or emeralds, or sap– phires, or whatnot, that glowed or gleamed from an ex– pansive shirt-front or a particularly nojsy necktie. What now seems an almost incredible proportion of the brokers and operators in the Wall Street of twenty-five to thirty years ago-at least such as were family men-had homes in the immediate vicinity of the Waldorf, West– chester and Long Island and uptown apartments not yet h~ving come into widespread vogue as dwelling places for Wall Street. "Cocktail-hour" drew a real majority of them to the Waldorf Bar. Whether they drank or not, there they knew they would find men they wished to see. Many of these cocktail-hour patrons were hosts at tables. As a rule, they actually drank cocktails at that time, Mar-