Astoria Quotes

Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot." [Hosting the Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence at the New York Waldorf-Astoria, June 6, 2006]

One of those who cooked for Rasputin during the Great War was a chef at Petrograd’s luxurious Astoria Hotel who went on, after the Revolution, to cook for Lenin and Stalin. He was Spiridon Putin, grandfather of President Vladimir Putin.

Astoria always knew that she was not destined for old age. She wanted me to have somebody when she left, because...it is exceptionally lonely, being Draco Malfoy. I will always be suspected. There is no escaping the past. I never realized, though, that by hiding him away from this gossiping, judgmental world, I ensured that my son would emerge shrouded in worse suspicion than I ever endured.

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. Customers quitting the island for Astoria or Cobble Hill would claim to welcome the change of pace, saying it would be nice to finally have a garden or live a little closer to the airport. They’d put a good face one it, but one could always detect an underlying sense of defeat. The apartments might be bigger and cheaper in other places, but one could never count on their old circle of friend making the long trip to attend a birthday party. Even Washington Heights was considered a stretch. People referred to it as Upstate New York, though it was right there in Manhattan.

This is the best of times and the worst of times. So what else is new? The bad news is that the Martians have landed in Manhattan, and have checked in at the Waldorf-Astoria. The good news is that they only eat homeless people of all colors, and they pee gasoline.

Blame or credit, does not belong to the child alone. Parents, those who raised the child, must be given equal credit, or blame. That does not change, when the child is one, twenty or ninety years old.

In Chinatown, a large rock painted with a message— CHINESE GO HOME!— shattered the front window of Chong & Sons, Jewellers. An arsonist’s fire gutted the Wing Sing restaurant overnight; Mr. Wing stood in the softly falling wisps of soot-flecked snow, his sober face backlit by the orange glow as he watched everything he’d built burn to the ground. […] Fear was everywhere. At a eugenics conference in the elegant ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, genteel men in genteel suits spoke of “the mongrel problem— the ruin of the white race.” They pointed to drawings and diagrams that proved most disease could be traced to inferior breeding stock. They called this science. They called it fact. They called it patriotism. People drank their coffee and nodded in agreement.

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless. Why not? Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed garments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends and live easy.

(Family rumor has it that he was originally cloistered off - that is relieved of his duties as a secular priest in Astoria - to free him of a persistent temptation to administer the sacramental wafer to his parishioners' lips by standing back two or three feet and trajecting it in a lovely arc over his left shoulder.)

And remember, to owe a human is one thing, to owe a faerie is another.

Deep feelings are for treasured moments and poetry,’ Nan always said.

Men. I swear to the gods you’re all clueless sometimes.

But with all you’ve lost in the last few days, I’m surprised you’re willing to lose any more, despite mistakes that were made.

I know how easy it is to sound like a corny version of Noam Chomsky when talking about something like this, but in a country where millions of dollars are spent on nuclear weapons, corporate welfare, and many ridiculous things, doesn't it just make sense to take care of people first? As soon as we can make the South Bronx, Compton, Taos, and Astoria look like Beverly Hills I'll have no problem watching a guy orbit Mars.

The sidhe (shee) were not an agreeable people. The oldest of the faerie races considered non-sidhe beneath them in beauty, wisdom, and nearly every aspect except humor. Some feelings were simply useless, according to them.

I wrap my other arm around him so that both my hands rest behind his neck. He lets out a long sigh. “Aislinn, I-” “No, let’s not talk about any of it tonight. I’m so incredibly tired of hard conversations.” “Okay, no hard conversations.

Well, either way, I think we were fated to be together. I have been drawn to you since the first moment my eyes met yours, even when I shouldn’t have. Even when I tried not to be. It was irritating as all Haile, but I ached for you, every moment of every day.

In June 1940, immediately after France surrendered to the invading Nazis, Rieber and Westrick took part in a celebratory dinner in a private room at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where executives of Ford, General Motors, Eastman Kodak, and other companies talked about the prospects for American cooperation with the Nazi regime that seemed certain to dominate Europe for the foreseeable future. Germany would be a good credit risk for American loans, Westrick said, and there should definitely be no more of this nonsense of selling US arms to the British.

Oh, Lawd, I done forgot Harlem! Say, you colored folks, hungry a long time in 135th Street--they got swell music at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure is a mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell on Lenox Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of coffee. Your pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on your hungry frame. You know, downtown folks are just crazy about Paul Robeson! Maybe they'll like you, too, black mob from Harlem. Drop in at the Waldorf this afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park Avenue a lot of darkie color--free for nothing!

He would forever be known as Jesse Owens, not by his given name. He would go on to win four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, becoming the first American in the history of track and field to do so in a single Olympics and disproving the Aryan notions of his Nazi hosts. It made headlines throughout the United States that Adolf Hitler, who had watched the races, had refused to shake hands with Owens, as he had with white medalists. But Owens found that in Nazi Germany, he had been able to stay in the same quarters and eat with his white teammates, something he could not do in his home country. Upon his return, there was a ticker-tape parade in New York. Afterward, he was forced to ride the freight elevator to his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria. “I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler,” he wrote in his autobiography. “But I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either. I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now, what’s the difference?” It would take the arrival of millions of more migrants and many more decades of perseverance on their part and on the part of protesters for human rights before they would truly become accepted.

His eyes trailed down, and he took her hand in his own. “The curse was weaker because it rebounded. Although it wasn’t strong enough to kill, it would have hurt Granger like hell if it hit her. He stepped in front of her instantly, without a moment’s hesitation. I was like it was instinctual. He protected her like-“ He cut himself off. He had more to say, Astoria could tell by the way he chewed on the inside of his cheek, physically restraining his mouth from moving. “Like what?” She urged. “Please, please, tell me.” Blaise looked up again, and brought his wife’s hand up to his lips to a place a kiss on her knuckles. “Like I would protect you.” Astoria’s breath hitched. “And then when did he do to the Order member? The one who almost hurt Hermione?” “He cast a hex, more furious than I’ve ever seen him. And slit Sean’s throat open so severely he decapitated the poor swine.

Monty küçük tuvaletin kapısını kilitleyip, klozetin kapalı kapağının üstüne oturdu. Biri tuvalet kağıdı rulosunun takılı olduğu plastiğin üzerine, cehenneme kadar yolunuz var, yazmıştı. Kesinlikle diye düşündü o da. Ama senin de cehenneme kadar yolun var. Herkesin. Kapıdaki Fransız kadının, şarap içerek yemek yiyenlerin, siparişleri alan garsonların, hepinizin canı cehenneme. Bu kentin ve içindeki herkesin canı cehenneme. Sokak köşelerinde sırıtarak dilenen serserilerin, türbanlı Sihlerin, sarı taksileriyle birbiriyle yarışan yıkanmak bilmez Pakistanlıların da. Göğüs kıllarını alıp, memelerini büyüten Chelsea'li ibnelerin de. Hepsinin canı cehenneme. Aşırı pahalı meyvelerinden piramitler yapan Koreli manavların, onların plastik ambalajlara sarılı lale ve güllerinin de. Beşinci Cadde'de sahte Gucci satan beyaz cübbeli Nijeryalıların da. Brighton Sahili'nde küp şekerleri dişlerinin arasında tutarak çaylarını cam bardaklardan içen Rusların da. Hepsinin canları cehenneme. 47. Cadde'de elmas satan şapkalı, kirli gabardin takımlı, Mesih'in gelmesini beklerken sürekli para sayıp duran Yahudilerin de. Sokaklarda sürtenlerin, yaşlıların ve de spastiklerin de. Kendini beğenmiş, metrolarda sürekli gazete okuyan, kolonya sürünmüş Wall Street borsacılarının da. Hepsinin canı cehenneme. Washington Square Park'ta, bellerinden cüzdan zincirleri sarkan patenli punkçıların, her yere bayrak asan, otomobillerinin açık camlardan dinledikleri müziği bangır bangır herkese dinleten Porto Rikoluların da. Naylon eşofmanları ve St. Anthony madalyonlarıyla gezip, saçlarına durmadan briyantin süren Bensonhurst İtalyanlarının da. Enginarı Balducci'den, eşarbı Hermes'ten alan, büzük dudaklı, asık suratlı ev kadınlarının da. Asla pas vermeyi bilmeyen, savunma yapmayan, her turnikeye girişte bir adım fazladan atan varoş çocuklarının da. Babaları Tokyo'ya iş gezisine giderken mutfakta oturup esrar çeken okullu uyuşturucu müptelalarının da. Mavi giysileri içinde kabadayılık taslayarak dolaşan, kalın enseli, Krispy Kreme'e giderken bile kırmızı ışığı takmayan polislerin de. Knicks'in, Indiana'ya karşı oyunu nedeniyle Patrick Ewing'in, Charles Smith ve onun Chicago maçındaki başarısız uzaktan atışlarının, John Starks'ın Houston maçındaki korkunç şutlarının da canı cehenneme. Jordan'ı hiç yenemedikleri için cehennemin dibine kadar yolları var. Sürekli söylenip duran bücür Jakob Elinsky'nin de canı cehenneme. Hep sevgililerimin kıçlarına bakıp duran Frank Slattery'nin de canı cehenneme. Ben gidince özgürlüğünü ilan edecek Naturelle Rosariao'nun da canı cehenneme. Güvendiğim ama beni gammazlayan Kostya Novotyny'in de. Karanlık odasında film banyo edip duran babamın da. Karlar altında çürüyen annemin de. Bu kadar çabuk kurtulan İsa'nın da canı cehenneme. Çarmıhta yalnızca birkaç saat, cehennemde bir hafta sonu sonra melek ordusuyla eğlence. Bu şehrin ve içindeki her şeyin canı cehenneme. Astoria'daki tek katlı evlerden Park Avenue'daki dublekslere, Brownsville'deki projelerden, Soho'daki mağazalara, Bellevue Hastanesi'nden Alphabet City'deki meskenlere, Park Slope'un kahverengi taşlarına kadar her şeyin canı cehenneme. Bırakın Araplar her tarafı bombalasınlar, bırakın sular yükselsin ve bu fare delikleri yok olsun, depremler yıksın tüm bu yüksek binaları, alevler sarsın her yanı. Yaksın, yıksın, bitirsin. Ve senin de canın cehenneme Montygomery Brogan. Her şeyi mahveden asıl sensin.

The wilderness did not keep to a businesslike schedule of hours or days, minutes or months, or deadlines for human convenience.

His ear twitched as if he knew she was watching. It was pointier than Carissa’s, naturally, and more so than any elf’s she’d seen before. That made it snootier somehow.

A few infected were able to slip past the quarantine, leading to outbreaks in Astoria and East Elmhurst.

The Wildcats tore into the Vals as they climbed prior to making their dives, and 11 of the 18 attacking dive bombers were shot down before they could even begin their bomb run. Others were knocked down by flak as they bore in on the Yorktown. It would not be enough to save the ship from damage, however. By 12:30, the Yorktown had taken three bomb hits, damaging the flight deck, starting a series of fires, and stopping her engines. At 12:38, Admiral Fletcher moved his command to the heavy cruiser Astoria. The returning Japanese pilots reported that they had left an American carrier ablaze and at least crippled. This would end up causing an important misunderstanding in the Japanese command. Less

Thorn illustrated that there lies a point when bravery shades into arrogance, and arrogance shades into idiocy.

Outside the Waldorf Astoria, a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin was whacking a hellhound with a rolled-up newspaper.

about my son’s parentage — they don’t seem to be going away. The other Hogwarts students tease Scorpius about it relentlessly — if the Ministry could release a statement reaffirming that all Time-Turners were destroyed in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries . . . HARRY: Draco, just let it blow over — they’ll soon move on. DRACO: My son is suffering and — Astoria hasn’t been well recently — so he needs all the support

It made headlines throughout the United States that Adolf Hitler, who had watched the races, had refused to shake hands with Owens, as he had with white medalists. But Owens found that in Nazi Germany, he had been able to stay in the same quarters and eat with his white teammates, something he could not do in his home country. Upon his return, there was a ticker-tape parade in New York. Afterward, he was forced to ride the freight elevator to his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria. “I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler,” he wrote in his autobiography. “But I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either. I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now, what’s the difference?

The Klan had taken root in both the rural side east of the Cascade Mountains and the metropolitan areas in the west, up and down the Willamette Valley. The first American town founded west of the Rocky Mountains, Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, elected a Klan mayor in 1922, and hosted a convention of the order two years later. Ten thousand people attended. Reuben Sawyer, a Portland pastor and a student of Henry Ford’s tracts against Jews, filled churches in the Beaver State with anti-Semitic rants. “In some parts of America,” he warned one crowd, “the kikes are so thick that a white man can hardly find room to walk.” Speaking to 6,000 in Portland, he said Jews were trying to establish “a government within the government.” In the same city, another top Klansman told an audience that “the only way to cure a Catholic is to kill him.

During portages, each voyageur hauled two 90-pound packets of pelts on his back—a staggering 180 pounds, one packet suspended from a tumpline around his forehead, the other resting atop it on his back—a half mile at a time between designated rest stops, then returned for additional loads. Some of the portages went on for ten miles, and a notorious one lasted for forty.

But he lacked a sense of urgency at key periods, and lacked a firm hand when one was sometimes called for. His greatest strength may have proved his greatest flaw—one that finally sunk John Jacob Astor’s West Coast empire. Wilson Price Hunt vastly preferred cooperation to confrontation.

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. John F. Kennedy, Waldorf Astoria, April 1961

An integral part of a public offering is a “road show,” during which company leaders pitch their prospects to bankers and investment gurus. Brin and Page refused to see themselves as supplicants. According to Lise Buyer, the founders routinely spurned any advice from the experienced financial team they’d hired to guide them through the process. “If you told them you couldn’t do something a certain way, they would think you were an idiot,” she says. The tone of the road-show presentations was set early, as Brin and Page introduced themselves by first names, an opening more appropriate for bistro waiters than potential captains of industry. And of course they weren’t attired like executives—the day of their presentation of Google’s case to investors was one more in a lifetime of casual dress days for them. Google had prepared a video to promote the company, but viewers considered it amateurish. It was poorly lit and wasn’t even enlivened by the customary upbeat musical sound track. Though anyone who read the prospectus should have been prepared for that, some investors had difficulty with the heresy that Google was willing to forgo some profits for its founders’ idealistic views of what made the world a better place. On the video Brin cautioned that Google might apply its resources “to ameliorate a number of the world’s problems.” Probably the low point of the road show was a massive session involving 1,500 potential investors at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. Brin and Page caused a firestorm by refusing to answer many questions, cracking jokes instead. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Some investors sitting in the ballroom began speculating with each other whether the executives had spent any time practicing the presentation, or if they were winging it.” The latter was in fact the case—despite the desperate urging of Google’s IPO team, Page and Brin had refused to perform even a cursory run-through.

January 28: Marilyn attends a March of Dimes fashion show at the Waldorf Astoria, held to benefit children with polio. She is photoraphed with several children, smiling and talking with them, as well as posing for the camera.

The book was in the form of a long letter from The Creator of the Universe to the experimental creature. The Creator congratulated the creature and apologized for all the discomfort he had endured. The Creator invited him to a banquet in his honor in the Empire Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, where a black robot named Sammy Davis, Jr., would sing and dance. And the experimental creature wasn't killed after the banquet. He was transferred to a virgin planet instead. Living cells were sliced from the palms of his hands, while he was unconscious. The operation didn’t hurt at all. And then the cells were stirred into a soupy sea on the virgin planet. They would evolve into ever more complicated life forms as the eons went by. Whatever shapes they assumed, they would have free will. Trout didn't give the experimental creature a proper name. He simply called him The Man. On the virgin planet, The Man was Adam and the sea was Eve. The Man often sauntered by the sea. Sometimes he waded in his Eve. Sometimes he swam in her, but she was too soupy for an invigorating swim. She made her Adam feel sleepy and sticky afterwards, so he would dive into an icy stream that had just jumped off a mountain. He screamed when he dived into the icy water, screamed again when he came up for air. He bloodied his shins and laughed about it when he scrambled up rocks to get out of the water. He panted and laughed some more, and he thought of something amazing to yell. The Creator never knew what he was going to yell, since The Creator had no control over him. The Man himself got to decide what he was going to do next—and why. After a dip one day, for instance, The Man yelled this: “Cheese!” Another time he yelled, “Wouldn't you really rather drive a Buick?

[T]his is the land of liberty and equality, where a man sees and feels that he is a man merely, and that he can no longer exist, [except if] he can himself procure the means of support. —Robert Stuart, journal postscript for October 13, 1812, while starving in today’s Wyoming, shortly before discovering the South Pass

During a lecture in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on April 27, 1961, he said: “For we are opposed, around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy, that relies primarily on covert means for expanding it's sphere of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation, instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night, instead of armies by day, It is a system which has conscripted vast material and human resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned. No rumor is printed. No secret is revealed.” Kennedy came up against FBI director Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles’ CIA that had maneuvered him into going along with the Bay of Pigs action. He wanted want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. Kennedy also offended the Military-Intelligence complex. Amongs others for the reason that he decided to pull out of Vietnam.[81] He was against a continuation of Western colonialist domination of Vietnam and criticized the U.S. alliance with the French effort to retain its empire. During his presidency he opposed a massive commitment of U.S. forces to fight a war that he felt the Vietnamese had to fight primarily on their own. He consistently rejected recommendations to introduce U.S. ground forces. Shortly before his assassination he started withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam.

In 1947 Cuba, clandestently Meyer Lansky acted as a go-between, establishing a cooperative atmosphere between Batista and the Mob. Both Lansky and Batista were outsiders to the Sicilian-run criminal organization, but they both were ambitious and had greed as a common value. This unholy alliance continued as long as Batista’s interests coincided with the interests of the Mafia. During a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, Batista offered Meyer Lansky control of the racetracks and casinos in Havana if he would help him return to the Cuban presidency. Now that the Mafia could clearly see the potential Havana had to offer, they decided to move ahead on the racketeering venture in Cuba. Batista became an important part of the complicated puzzle. Although the former Sergeant/Colonel had lived in exile, he finagled his return to power as a Senator, providing the Mafia with a way of openly buying their way into Cuba. Meetings between Batista and Meyer Lansky provided them both with a common goal. The planning for a territorial takeover began, with both men maneuvering to improve their advantage. Lansky figured out how to make money and Batista offered him his cooperation and protection in return… depending of course, on Batista’s return to the Presidency. Read the award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba,” page 205

dead at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Wedgwood Room, a venue of such high tone that Cole Porter himself descended

But they could be frightening, too. “Watching Watergate in Archie Bunker Country,” said the cover of the June 18 issue of New York magazine. It began with the author, top-drawer trend journalist Gail Sheehy, recording what happened when the proprietor of Terry’s Bar in Astoria, Queens, asked his patrons if he might tune the bar’s TV to the hearings. Nine men cried “Forget it!” “The majority called for Popeye cartoons. But Terry couldn’t find a channel that wasn’t polluted with the ‘search for unvarnished truth.’ They had no choice. Television was suppressing their freedom not to know.” These ironworkers, sandhogs, elevator operators, and beer truck drivers said things like this: that Ted Kennedy “killed a broad” (“Now there was a mountain, and they made a molehill

April 26: Marilyn attends the Newspaper Public Convention luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria. She is photographed with Hedda Hopper and J. Edgar Hoover.

In February 1945, we received a letter from Bernie. It had been sent a year earlier, on the occasion of his marriage to Connie. It was an invitation to the festive luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria. The menu sounded like fiction: meat, vegetables, wines, desserts, liqueurs - all this just French and American names. We had not seen any of these foods in years. The name Waldorf Astoria did not mean anything either. We did not know at the time that my sister Betty had given birth to a daughter Frances in 1942 and that Sali had borne a son Allan in 1943. My parents were not aware that they had become grandparents of two new off-spring.

When transports carrying survivors of the Battle of Savo Island finally returned home, the men were sent to quarantine, removed from public circulation. They had stories to tell that Admiral King would be quite happy not to see in the newspapers. Some five hundred survivors of the Astoria, Vincennes, and Quincy were held under virtual house arrest in a barracks that had been constructed on Treasure Island for the 1939 World’s Fair. Marines were detailed to prevent the sailors from leaving. “Don’t you say one word about the battle,” they were told.

I view [your undertaking],” Jefferson would write to Astor, “as the germ of a great, free and independent empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and self-government spreading from that side as well as this side, will ensure their complete establishment over the whole.

With Britain distracted by the Napoleonic Wars, President Jefferson felt compelled to get there first—before his long-hated British, with their “bastard liberty,” and who, as he contemptuously put it, “would not lose the sale of a bale of fur for the freedom of the whole world.” On

Anything good in life is work. And men like me love a little trouble.

But without you, there’s no him and without you, there’s no me. There’s no life inside me without you by my side.

The boy’s first day of school in the North, he was assigned to a grade lower than the one he’d been in where he had come from, and the teacher couldn’t understand his southern accent. When she asked him his name, he said he was called J.C. The teacher misheard him and, from that day forward, called him Jesse instead. So did everyone else in this new world he was in. He would forever be known as Jesse Owens, not by his given name. He would go on to win four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, becoming the first American in the history of track and field to do so in a single Olympics and disproving the Aryan notions of his Nazi hosts. It made headlines throughout the United States that Adolf Hitler, who had watched the races, had refused to shake hands with Owens, as he had with white medalists. But Owens found that in Nazi Germany, he had been able to stay in the same quarters and eat with his white teammates, something he could not do in his home country. Upon his return, there was a ticker-tape parade in New York. Afterward, he was forced to ride the freight elevator to his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria. “I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler,” he wrote in his autobiography. “But I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either. I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now, what’s the difference?

Conversely, Franchère writes

At breakfast on Friday morning a crowd of curious hotel guests gathered around Arthur Peuchen in the Waldorf-Astoria’s dining room and made him recount his story once again. In the hotel’s largest ballroom, meanwhile, seven U.S. senators were preparing to question J. Bruce Ismay, the first witness to appear before the U.S. Senate investigation. As he began his testimony that morning, Ismay still seemed shaken by the disaster, and his voice was almost a whisper as he expressed his “sincere grief at this deplorable catastrophe” and offered his full cooperation to the inquiry. Yet his answers were guarded and often prefaced with “I presume” or “I believe” and concluded by “More than that I cannot say”—giving his testimony an air of evasiveness. His claims that he was simply a passenger like any other and that the Titanic was not pushed to its maximum speed were greeted with skepticism by the senators and with open hostility by the press. The Hearst newspapers famously dubbed him J. “Brute” Ismay and ran his photograph framed by those of Titanic widows. Edith Rosenbaum was among the few survivors who thought that the White Star chairman was being made a scapegoat and made a point of telling reporters that it was Ismay who had put her into a lifeboat.

Rockefeller had had his own private station built fifty feet below the Waldorf-Astoria to save him traveling the eight blocks to Grand Central

It was at about this time, on the eve of their annual sailing to London for the social and sporting season there, that Cornelia and her husband, the couple formerly known as Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Martin, sprouted a hyphen in their surname, somewhat like a supernumerary nipple, and, in parallel fashion to the orthographic coupling of the Waldorf and the Astoria hotels, began to call themselves the Bradley-Martins. In a similar status uptick they followed the virtually hallowed practice of their class by acquiring for their daughter an impecunious but titled mate, the twenty-five-year-old fourth Earl of Craven. A secure room in the basement of the Bradley

The great event had proved to be so blatant and heartless in its abdication of taste and social conscience that public opinion, along with a punitive doubling of their tax assessment, eventually pushed the Bradley-Martins into exile or, as they thought of it, preferred residence in England. Two years after the ball they emptied their house on Twentieth Street and shipped the furnishings to London. In the last of their several farewells to New York society they gave a banquet for eighty-six of their friends at the Waldorf-Astoria. The guests consumed green turtle soup, timbales of shad roe, and mignons of spring lamb while the hotel orchestra played Spanish melodies and popular black songs, among them a particular favorite of those in attendance, “If You Ain’t Got No Money, You Needn’t Come ’Round.

the Waldorf-Astoria crystallized the improbable and fabulous. It was more than a mere hotel. It was a vast, glittering, iridescent fantasy that had been conjured up to infect millions of plain Americans with a new idea—the aspiration to lead an expensive, gregarious life as publicly as possible.

Dave Hughes, in his fine book An Angler’s Astoria, has

Bernard also suggests that city dwellers do not know where the plumbing in their buildings goes because they are afraid to know: afraid to contemplate everything below the surface of pure, hygienic, Falwell-Reagan civilization: afraid to confront darkness and vermin and Lovecraftian cellars leading down to endless caves and labyrinths. He compares the panic when cockroaches were found in some of the finest old mansions on Park Avenue to be the similar panic when Welfare people ("epi-vermin") were found living in the Waldorf Astoria. Bernard surmises, acutely I think, that no white man can sit on a toilet without unconscious anxiety that a HUGE BLACK HAND might reach up through the plumbing in accord with the laws of English grammar and grab him by the testicles.

Astoria always knew that she was not destined for old age. She wanted me to have somebody when she left, because . . . it is exceptionally lonely, being Draco Malfoy. I will always be suspected. There is no escaping the past. I never realized though, that by hiding him away from this gossiping, judgmental world, I ensured that my son would emerge shrouded in worse suspicion than I ever endured.

Once during the protests before the World Economic Forum, a kind of junket of tycoons, corporate flacks and politicians, networking and sharing cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria, pretended to be discussing ways to alleviate global poverty. I was invited to engage in a radio debate with one of their representatives. As it happened the task went to another activist but I did get far enough to prepare a three-point program that I think would have taken care of the problem nicely: - an immediate amnesty on international debt (An amnesty on personal debt might not be a bad idea either but it’s a different issue.) - an immediate cancellation of all patents and other intellectual property rights related to technology more than one year old - the elimination of all restrictions on global freedom of travel or residence. The rest would pretty much take care of itself. The moment the average resident of Tanzania, or Laos, was no longer forbidden to relocate to Minneapolis or Rotterdam, the government of every rich and powerful country in the world would certainly decide nothing was more important than finding a way to make sure people in Tanzania and Laos preferred to stay there. Do you really think they couldn’t come up with something? (p. 79)

A voyageur canoe, for several centuries, was by far the fastest mode of transportation into the wild heart of the North American continent. Propelled by the powerful arms of the voyageurs, commanded by the steersman, and paddling in exact unison at forty to sixty strokes per minute, these canoes surged through the water at four to six miles per hour, a remarkable speed. Paddling twelve to fifteen hours per day, with short breaks while afloat for a pipe of tobacco (they measured distances in terms of “pipes”) or a stop ashore for a mug of tea, they could cover fifty to ninety miles per day, unless they faced strong headwinds or waves that forced them to the shelter of shore, a state called degradé. During that single day each voyageur would make more than thirty thousand paddle strokes. On the upper Great Lakes, the canoes traversed hundreds of miles of empty, forested shorelines and vast stretches of clear water without ports or settlements or sails, except for the scattered Indian encampment.

Any ideas?” “Well, according to the fingerprints we matched up, several people entered the room on the night of the party. Charlie Evans was one of them. Angus Greenfield was also in here, which you already knew, I believe. And then the final person who entered the room was Luke Shaw.

It made headlines throughout the United States that Adolf Hitler, who had watched the races, had refused to shake hands with Owens, as he had with white medalists. But Owens found that in Nazi Germany, he had been able to stay in the same quarters and eat with his white teammates, something he could not do in his home country. Upon his return, there was a ticker-tape parade in New York. Afterward, he was forced to ride the freight elevator to his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria.

You're Albus Potter. She's Rose Granger-Weasley. And I am Scorpius Malfoy. My parents are Astoria and Draco Malfoy. Our parents - they didn't get on.

The people who went to watch men butting heads at New Orleans’ Buffalo Bill House would likely have felt out of place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which opened in the 1890s on the site where the Empire State Building now stands. The bar at the old Waldorf Astoria was the scene of the sort of decadence we often associate with the decade that became known as the Gay Nineties.

Colonel William F. Cody, otherwise known as “Buffalo Bill,” was also a regular at the old Waldorf Astoria, and he was well known for never refusing a drink on another man’s tab—when asked, he would say, “Sir, you speak the language of my tribe.

In February of 1921, the Yankees purchased 10 acres of property from the estate of William Waldorf Astoria at 161st St and River Ave in the west Bronx, directly across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. Yankees owner Rupert and Tillinghast Huston announced the construction of baseball's first triple-decked structure. With a capacity of over 70,000, it would also be the first structure to be called a "stadium.

Raskob decided to enter the world of New York real estate and give his pal a job as the head of the undertaking. Raskob convinced some of his wealthy friends, including Pierre S. du Pont, to join him in a syndicate, and they negotiated with Chatham Phenix for the Waldorf-Astoria site. They were the mysterious prospective buyers whose interest in the site had been floated. By all accounts, they got the property for a song—$16 or $17 million. On August 29, 1929, the same day the city announced that Second Avenue would be the site for the next subway line, former governor Al Smith lived up to a promise made months before to newspaper reporters to announce his business plans. From his suite in the Hotel Biltmore, surrounded by trappings of his former office, Smith announced the creation of a company that would build a thousand-foot-high eighty-

Du Pont bought the leases on the Waldorf-Astoria from the Boldt estate in 1918 and created the Waldorf-Astoria Realty Corporation to operate the hotel.

The Waldorf’s wide corridors and heavily decorated public rooms were démodé. Worse, they used up valuable space without a return. The Waldorf-Astoria found itself an anachronism—it was out of time, out of place, and plumb out of luck.

There is a New Orleans city accent … associated with downtown New Orleans, particularly with the German and Irish Third Ward, that is hard to distinguish from the accent of Hoboken, Jersey City, and Astoria, Long Island, where the Al Smith inflection, extinct in Manhattan, has taken refuge. The reason, as you might expect, is that the same stocks that brought the accent to Manhattan imposed it on New Orleans.

The caption: 42 MEN KILLED CONSTRUCTING THE NEW EMPIRE STATE BUILDING…“THE BUILDING WAS COMPLETED ON TIME.” Starrett responded by going public with the figures: With an average of six hundred men employed in the demolition of the Waldorf-Astoria and with five thousand men employed on the construction of the building, five workers were killed. One worker was hit by a truck as he was sawing a plank; the second ran into a blast area; the third stepped off a scaffold; the fourth fell down an elevator shaft; and the fifth was struck by a hoist. In

The steel frame and great thick walls proved so staunchly built that before the Waldorf-Astoria was finally razed and the last broken fragments of its wall had been removed, $900,000 had been spent.3 Demolition was a risky business, not only for the workers but for passing pedestrians as well, and insurance on a job like the Waldorf-Astoria accounted for about 35 percent of the total cost.

When asked how long they thought the Empire State job would take to build, Paul Starrett said that they could tear down the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and finish the new building in eighteen months. He also said that their fee for all this would be insignificant compared with the amount of money the corporation would save by having the construction completed in such a short time.

Midtown was a war zone. We flew over little skirmishes everywhere. A giant was ripping up trees in Bryant Park while dryads pelted him with nuts. Outside the Waldorf Astoria, a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin was whacking a hellhound with a rolled-up newspaper. A trio of Hephaestus campers fought a squad of dracaenae in the middle of Rockefeller Center. I was tempted to stop and help, but I could tell from the smoke and noise that the real action had moved farther south. Our defenses were collapsing. The enemy was closing in on the Empire State Building. We did a quick sweep of the surrounding area. The Hunters had set up a defensive line on 37th, just three blocks north of Olympus. To the east on Park Avenue, Jake Mason and some other Hephaestus campers were leading an army of statues against the enemy. To the west, the Demeter cabin and Grover's nature spirits had turned Sixth Avenue into a jungle that was hampering a squadron of Kronos's demigods. The south was clear for now, but the flanks of the enemy army were swinging around. A few more minutes and we'd be totally surrounded.

On the existence and threat of modern-day secret societies: We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence . . . building a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. —JOHN F. KENNEDY, FROM A SPEECH GIVEN AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL ON APRIL 27, 1961

As Cal Bocock sat in the back of the Astoria patol car, he realized his earlier feeling of hitting a low point had been a false alarm. He now fully expected he would die in police custody, in the hands of those he had been pursuing all these months.

Astoria always knew that she was not destined for old age. She wanted me to have somebody when she left, because . . . it is exceptionally lonely, being Draco Malfoy. I will always be suspected. There is no escaping the past. I never realized, though, that by hiding