FROM FASHION STATEMENT TO EPICUREAN EVENT
When the term “Peacock Alley” was coined by a scribe to portray the daily promenade of notables through this original colonnade between The Waldorf and The Astoria hotels, it inspired a tradition that continues today. Then, the beau monde strutted and strolled to showcase the latest fashions to the public and their peers.
Throughout its history, Peacock Alley has been a place to see and be seen. Shortly after its “birth,” Peacock Alley became so famous and popular that its moving population on any day could total 25,000 or more. On days when a president, prince, or other notable visited the hotel, upwards of 35,000 people might visit the grand promenade. In February 1903, New Yorker writer William Marion Reedy commented, “The place is like Port Said as Kipling described it in the phrase, ‘if you stopped long enough there everybody in the world that is worth knowing would eventually happen along.’
When the original Waldorf=Astoria was demolished in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building, Peacock Alley did not disappear. The new Waldorf=Astoria opened in 1931 and unveiled a new Peacock Alley in its North Lobby. The wide corridor, strewn with comfortable couches and chairs, became more than a promenade – it became the gathering place for a new generation of notables. When the North Lobby was reconfigured in the 1960s, Peacock Alley reopened as a fine dining restaurant. The venue quickly made history again on April 20, 1964, when it hosted an invitation-only, black-tie party honoring the hotel’s famous four-legged resident, a reddish-brown cocker spaniel. The pup greeted celebrities and socialites alike that night, basking in the glow of his likeness, which Executive Chef Eugene Scanlan had personally fashioned from ice.
By the 1980s, the restaurant was a favorite of luminaries such as Frank Sinatra (a permanent resident of The Waldorf Towers), and was serving the city’s most extravagant Sunday Brunch that wrapped around the famous two-ton, nine-foot clock from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Yet, the restaurant of this period was tucked back into a private space, with only the bar area open to the hotel’s grand Art Deco Main Lobby. It would take the turn of another century before the restaurant would return to a design more akin to its original intent. After great success, Peacock Alley closed in 2001, following September 11. But the dream of Peacock Alley remained and The Waldorf=Astoria began planning almost immediately a design that would evoke the true spirit of the original.
According to The Waldorf=Astoria’s Executive Director of Catering, Jim Blauvelt, “We wanted the new Peacock Alley to have the same ‘see and be seen’ ambience of the original promenade. We worked closely with a design team to reinvent the space, bringing the restaurant out into the Main Lobby. Its design is such that it enables guests to dine in an atmosphere both gracious and serene, yet be surrounded by all the excitement that characterizes The Waldorf=Astoria’s Main Lobby.”
