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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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