Eight Historic Moments That Took Place at the Waldorf Astoria New York

The famous hotel reopens this spring after an extensive renovation that began in 2017

Jaclyn Greenberg - Freelance writer

April 16, 2025

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Hotel magnate Conrad Hilton fulfilled his dream to purchase the Waldorf-Astoria in 1949. He called the luxury hotel on Park Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets in Midtown Manhattan the “Greatest of Them All,” a phrase he wrote on a picture of the Waldorf that he kept under the glass on his desk for decades.

The superlative was fitting given all that’s happened at the venerable address.

“Anyone who wanted to make a statement and ensure that it would be publicized would make it at the Waldorf,” says David Freeland, author of American Hotel: The Waldorf-Astoria and the Making of a Century. “It was very much a stage for the city and nation.”

Today, Freeland adds, it’s hard to imagine a hotel having that kind of influence. But in the early and mid-1900s, hotel managers considered themselves social leaders. “Hotels, in their view, were great community centers. I believe that this is the context in which the Waldorf, as the leading hotel in the country, and the one to which all other hotels looked to for guidance and inspiration, made its greatest contribution.”

Closed since 2017, the rebranded Waldorf Astoria New York is expected to reopen this spring, following a multiyear restoration effort led by architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon. The updated building will offer 375 hotel rooms and 372 residences ranging from studios to four-bedrooms. Many of the famous rooms where history happened, including the Grand Ballroom, Jade Room, Astor Salon, Basildon Room and Silver Corridor, have been modernized for the future, while still showcasing their original Art Deco details.

In anticipation of the hotel’s revival, here are eight historic events that happened at the prominent institution during the 20th century.

The first Titanic Senate hearings

After the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, hearings were conducted by a special subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee to discuss the cause of the disaster and how future tragedies could be avoided. The first of these hearings was held at the original Waldorf, which opened in 1893 at the site of today’s Empire State Building and closed in 1929 to move to its present-day location on Park Avenue.

During the hearings, which began on April 19, 1912, “a total of 82 witnesses testified about ice warnings that were ignored, the inadequate number of lifeboats, the ship’s speed, the failure of nearby ships to respond to the Titanic’s distress calls and the treatment of passengers of different classes,” according to the United States Senate. John Jacob Astor IV, who died on the Titanic, had actually helped build the Astoria Hotel, which later became part of the Waldorf-Astoria. After one week in New York City, the hearings were moved to Washington, D.C. Ultimately, the panel printed its conclusion on the causes leading to the wreck in a “Titanic Disaster” report.

Residencies by Cole Porter—and later Frank Sinatra

In addition to being a hotel for guests on vacation or business, the Waldorf-Astoria was a residence for wealthy individuals in the 1900s. The songwriter Cole Porter moved to the Waldorf Towers in the mid-1930s. In his ten-room suite on the 33rd floor, he housed a Steinway piano he called “High Society.”

“The previous owner catered to Cole Porter’s needs and wants, which set the tone for the Waldorf in the mid-20th century,” says historian Mark Young. Room service delivered a pitcher of martinis daily. The rings from Porter’s drink glasses can still be seen on the piano, Frank Farrell writes in The Greatest of Them All. When the hotel reopens this spring, visitors will be able to see the piano in the lobby.

Porter died in 1964, and 15 years later, Frank Sinatra moved into the same residence that Porter once called “a dream of beauty.” Ol’ Blue Eyes lived there until 1988.

Winston Churchill’s speech

On March 15, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, having recently delivered his most famous post-World War II address, “The Sinews of Peace,” at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where, in front of U.S. President Harry Truman, he coined the term “Iron Curtain” in reference to communist repression, explains Freeland. Churchill delivered a second speech at the Waldorf-Astoria, and, together, the two speeches can be seen as harbingers of the coming Cold War, which pitted the U.S. and capitalism against Soviet communist ideologies. At the time, many Americans still believed the Soviet Union would cooperate with the U.S.

“I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word,” Churchill said at the Waldorf. “I felt it was necessary for someone in an unofficial position to speak in arresting terms about the present plight of the world.”

The “Waldorf Declaration”

A closed-door meeting with the heads of Hollywood movie studios, including Eric Johnston, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and film producers from Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers, was held at the Waldorf on November 25, 1947. There, they created the so-called Waldorf Declaration, banning the “Hollywood Ten”—ten producers, directors and screenwriters suspected of Communist affiliations who refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. The studio heads also created a Hollywood blacklist, which said that anyone associated with the Communist Party could not work in the movie industry.

“The ‘Waldorf Declaration’ dictated that the studios would not knowingly hire anyone with presumed Communist sympathies and led to the notorious Hollywood blacklist, which damaged many careers,” says Freeland.

The first Tony Awards ceremony

The American Theater Wing’s very first Tony Awards ceremony was held at a dinner in the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria on April 6, 1947. The Easter Sunday show was named after Antoinette Perry, an actress, director, producer and wartime leader who had recently died. The awards were named after Perry because of her lifelong involvement in theater, from directing 17 Broadway shows to encouraging young actors.

During the first two years of the Tony Awards, winners received a scroll, a money clip, and a cigarette lighter (for men) or a compact (for women). But starting in 1949, all Tony Award winners received a two-sided medallion that spun on a base. Originally, one side featured the masks of comedy and tragedy and the other a portrait of Perry.

More than 1,000 people attended that first show, with tickets costing $7. (The event was such a success that ticket prices increased the following year to $10 per ticket.) Musicals and plays that were represented during the inaugural ceremony included Brigadoon, All My Sons, Street Scene and Finian’s Rainbow.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “A Realistic Look at Race Relations” speech

A banquet celebrating the second anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled against racial segregation in public schools, was held at the Waldorf on May 17, 1956. Martin Luther King Jr., who was 27 years old at the time, gave the keynote speech at the banquet hosted by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. King was recently “free on bail after having been arrested by Alabama officials for his leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott,” Freeland writes in American Hotel. “King used the Waldorf speech, titled ‘A Realistic Look at Race Relations,’ to discuss the boycott’s goal: initially crafted to ameliorate conditions on Montgomery buses for African Americans, it had now expanded to include full integration of the city’s bus system.”

Going forward, King would become increasingly well-known on the national stage. “This was credited, by members of the African American press, as being an event that would usher him from the purview of local activism into the national realm,” says Freeland. “One writer asserted that, after the Waldorf speech, King would ‘never again belong exclusively to Montgomery, Alabama.’”

The first Human Rights Campaign benefit

The first benefit dinner for the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), a gay-rights political action committee, was held at the Waldorf-Astoria on September 29, 1982. The HRCF was formed to raise funds to support political candidates who supported its mission.

“HRCF softened the radical edge of its predecessors by steering gay activism in a consciously mainstream direction,” explains Freeland in American Hotel. The dinner at the Waldorf was the first time a major politician, former Vice President Walter Mondale, addressed a gay-rights organization. “Mondale, who previously had evinced signs of queasiness on the subject of gay rights, now sought to promote himself as a liberal leader in tune with the issues of the day,” writes Freeland.

Admission was $150 per plate, a high price for the time, and the dinner raised $50,000, which helped fund candidates who supported the gay community in the next congressional election. “The Waldorf deserves a lot of credit,” suggests Freeland, “for its willingness to host events for social groups that were still, at the time, misunderstood by much of the general public. But this was part of the Waldorf’s mission: to show hospitality and to welcome diverse members of society.”

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions

On January 20, 1988, the Beatles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Waldorf-Astoria’s Grand Ballroom. Guests paid $300 each to attend the event. The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, the Drifters and the Supremes all performed; “I Saw Her Standing There” featured vocals by George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, as well as guitar by Bob Dylan, who was also being inducted.

The following year, on January 18, 1989, the fourth annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony was also held at the Waldorf-Astoria. Inductees at that sold-out event included the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding and the Temptations.

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Jaclyn Greenberg is a freelance writer. She has written for the New York Times, CNN, Wired and other publications.