Background
George Boldt was born on April 25, 1851, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, the son of a merchant.
George Boldt was born on April 25, 1851, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, the son of a merchant.
George was educated in the common schools of Germany.
Boldt came alone to the United States at the age of thirteen, and went to work in a hotel in New York City. With his savings he started a chicken farm and sheep ranch in Texas. This venture proving unsuccessful, he returned to the hotel service at Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, afterwards taking a position in Parker's Restaurant, Broadway, New York City, where he advanced through successive stages from general-utility man to steward. His next post was as steward of the famous Clover Club in Philadelphia, where influential members helped him convert a large private residence on Broad St. into a hotel, called the Bellevue. His policy was to charge high prices for good things, which at the same time preserved its exclusiveness. Meanwhile, he turned a favor for William Waldorf Astor, and won his gratitude.
When Astor decided to abandon his residence at Fifth Ave. and Thirty-fourth St. , New York, Boldt was instrumental in persuading him to build on the site the Waldorf Hotel, then the most magnificent in the world, of which he was named manager. When it opened, in 1893, there were but thirty-two guests, and other hotelmen smiled at its apparent failure. But the public which demanded the best found that they could get it at the Waldorf. Within a few years it was too small for the great business Boldt had built up, and by 1898 the Astoria was completed, forming the Waldorf-Astoria, which Boldt made famous the world over as the acme of what a good hotel should be. By actual count some 20, 000 people a day entered the Waldorf-Astoria, which had some 1, 800 employees.
Boldt was president or a director of a number of insurance companies and other corporations; was president of the Holland Library, Alexandria Bay, New York, and of the Thousand Islands Country Club; a trustee of the Saturday and Sunday Hospital Association, and active head of the trustees of Cornell University, to which he gave $100, 000, and for which he planned its comprehensive system of dormitories. He rode frequently in Central Park, and was a good judge of a saddle horse. He had a winter home at Santa Barbara, California, and a summer estate of 1, 000 acres on the St. Lawrence River. In 1909 Tammany Hall considered him as a possible candidate for mayor of New York.
More than any other man Boldt was responsible for the modern American hotel. When he died the flags on almost every New York hotel were placed at half-staff.
George Boldt is the person most responsible for the modern American luxury hotel. While being president of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Company, Boldt also erected the new Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia, the largest hotel the city had ever seen in those times. His place in the hotel business was peculiar to himself, there was none to dispute his preeminence, none who attended to the multifarious duties of the hotel proprietor with the same unflagging enthusiasm, or who did more to raise it from the dull routine of a business to something approaching a profession.
Boldt was a lovable and simple person.
Quotes from others about the person
"George Boldt invented the theory that the public was right. He trained his employes to give the patron something he would like, and he never let a man leave his doors unsatisfied. " - Simeon Ford, dean of New York hotelmen
Boldt was married to Louise, daughter of William Kehrer of Philadelphia. They had two children: George Charles Boldt Jr. and Clover Louise Boldt.
