Iconic hotel renovation storyfrom @iambenwolff

Transcript

This iconic NYC hotel just went through a $2,000,000,000 eight year renovation. They cut over a thousand rooms to reopen with '3 tier. The most ambitious hotel renovation in American history. This is the Waldorf Astoria. It first opened in 1893 on 5th Avenue. That original building was torn down to build the Empire State Building. So in 1931, they rebuilt it on Park Avenue, and for the next eighty six years, it became the most famous hotel in the world. The first Tony Awards were held in the Grand Ballroom. Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Winston Churchill all walked Peacock Alley. Then in 2017, they shut it all down. The building has nearly 5,600 windows. Only one original survived intact. They used that single window as the template to restore every other one. A 140,000 tile mosaic in the Rank Avenue entrance was pulled apart and reset by hand. The Rank Ballroom was rebuilt to its original 1930s design using architectural drawings that the original team never finished. And the repositioning is just as dramatic as the renovation. 1,400 rooms became three seventy five hotel rooms and three seventy two luxury residences. Most rooms now exceed 570 square feet. Three new restaurants including Lux Yard from Gramercy Tavern's Michael Anthony. A Guerlain Wellness Spa. 43,000 square feet of restored event space. They didn't just renovate the Waldorf. They traded scale for exclusivity. Fewer rooms, bigger suites, higher positioning. This isn't competing with Marriott anymore. It's competing with Aman. Would you stay at the new Waldorf Astoria? Let me know in the comments, and follow for more content like this.