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OldWaldorf Bar Days
the names of certain of them made the first page of the
newspapers almost every day. They were, in their way,
giants, and they took their ease in a Gargantuan way.
Such of their performances as were worth while from
an historical standpoint have been recorded in books,
and are now no concern of mine. My interest lies in what
they drank. For, whatever his other purposes, a man
almost invariably did at least one thing when he entered
the Waldorf Bar: he drank. More often than not it might
be said, "Good God,
how
he drank!" And sometimes,
"And
what!"
Many of that noble army of gallant drinkers I knew
by name; many others I knew by sight. The majority
have gone. The great hall where they guzzled every day,
some of them for more than twenty years, ceased to func–
tion one dark day in January,
1920.
Only the name of
the Waldorf Bar survives. That, and its traditions. But
while the light holds, let me try to recreate it, and to
limn the shapes of some of those who went surging in
and out, while, above the roar of conversation and the
chatter of the ticker, the air was rent with calls of "Same
here!" and "Here's how!"
On the walls are a few paintings-expensive-looking.
Here and there is a piece of massive, if not always orna–
mental, statuary. In one corner stands a great rectangu–
lar counter, behind which a dozen men in white coats are
busy all afternoon and eyening ministering to an endless
array of thirsts.
In
the center of the space the bar en–
closes is a high refrigerator table, its top graced by the
figures of a bull and a bear, between which is a tiny lamb,
all in bronze. Between the two emblems of Wall Street
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