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)

OldWaldorf Bar Days

him, was familiarly known to most of a wide acquaintance

as "Uncle Bill." A corpulent, cheery figure he was, always

ready with a smile and a pleasant greeting-and thirsty!

Many of these cocktail-hour patrons were hosts at

tables. As a rule, they actually drank cocktails at that

time,·Martinis and Manhattans beingmost popular. That

was before the "Clover Club" had won in New York

temples of thirst a wide but short-lived popularity. Very

few fancy drinks were served at cocktail-time. There

were many customers, who would stand up to the bar

with a group of friends, and before they moved away

would gulp down five or six Manhattans or Martinis

in succession. A big banquet in the hotel would fill the

Barroom at midnight, for whatever they had had up–

stairs of cocktails, champagne, and liqueurs, many men

must have, in those days, a nightcap. Often, it took

several to get them properly "habited" for bed.

THE "WALDORF CROWD"

During the last ten or fifteen years of its existence,

though its mantle was being pa·rted by such popular

establishments as James B. Regan's "Forty-second

Street Country Club" (as the Knickerbocker Hotel

Chapter of the American School of ..Drinking was

known), the Belmont Bar, so popular with commuters

on the New Haven and New York Central Railroads,

and other more convenient

hangout~

for the thirsty,

what was called "The Waldorf Crowd" was much in

evidence in the room after the close of the market.

While lots of newspaper readers of the time thought

by "Waldorf Crowd" was meant an army of speculators

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