Monroe lived in the Waldorf Astoria for a year in 1955. The first hotel wasn’t immediately beloved, with the Indianapolis Times reporting in 1928 that “people all over the country laughed” at the idea that it would offer 350 private bathrooms, calling the project “Astor’s folly.”Īctress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller at the long-running Paris Ball. But it is actually the second iteration of the hotel - the first, established in 1893, was demolished to make way for the Empire State Building. The extensive renovations are the biggest makeover the Waldorf Astoria has received since it opened. “I wanted it to feel like a grand home and not like a hotel,” he said. Credit: Courtesy of Waldorf Astoria New Yorkĭeniot is designing the residential spaces with the layouts of a private mansion in mind, he said over the phone, conceptualizing rooms for leisure and entertaining, such as the stately Presidential Library and Bar and modern-looking Monte Carlo Gaming Room. The Starlight Pool will be converted from the hotel’s Starlight Ballroom, where performers including Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra once sang. (The hotel rooms, meanwhile, are being overhauled by Pierre-Yves Rochon.) “I wanted to go more modernist…fresher, but still feel grounded.” “In the section that I worked on, there was nothing which was landmarked, so there was no starting point, there was no nothing to preserve,” said Jean-Louis Deniot, the French designer tasked with transforming the new apartments and amenities. And, for the first time, the Waldorf Astoria will offer residential apartments to own, rather than lease, within the twin Waldorf Towers. While parts of the hotel are being restored to its original state - rooms including the Grand Ballroom are protected by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission - much of the building is being entirely reimagined for the future. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Imagesīut the Waldorf Astoria has also been closed for the past four and a half years, undergoing a more than $1 billion renovation after it was purchased for $1.95 billion in 2014 by China’s Anbang Insurance Group (now Dajia Insurance Group). The Waldorf Astoria has been closed for more than four years, undergoing a massive renovation.