"Big Realtor Dickers"

Oscar Tschirky lost his job last week.

He was given notice that presently his services would no longer be required. He bowed as unctuously as if he were once again seating the Crown Prince of Siam at the dinner table, and said he was sorry.

Oscar is heavy, thickset, grave-eyed.

His bow, which has been the chief instrument of his profession, mingles in just the right quantities, elements of deference and cordiality. Many people the world around know of Oscar; many pretend they know him; a great many actually have come to know him during the 35 years he has been with the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Said he: "I feel sad about it, naturally.

I feel sorry for Fifth Avenue that this hotel is going out of business." He drummed the table thoughtfully with his fingers, and nodded solemnly again. "I opened the hotel and I will be closing it."

For Oscar was on the staff when New York's most famed hostelry opened, in 1893.

The regrets that troubled the soul of Oscar, however, never, entered into the discussions of a group of men who gathered in a downtown bank in New York and spent the day deliberating. They were realtors, and they talked of leases and rents, and how many stories an office building must rise in order to yield income proportionate to the value of a property in terms of Fifth Avenue frontage. In the end, they nodded in agreement on a real estate dicker which will wipe out the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a famed Manhattan landmark, a tradition of princesses and kings, Peacock Alley, memories of the Bradley-Martin ball of 1897.

The hotel was sold, at a price said to be around $20,000,000, and will be razed next summer.

Actually the Waldorf-Astoria, as it now stands, is two buildings. The first was erected by William Waldorf Astor, famed in real-estate deals of the last century, on the site of his residence at 33rd Street & Fifth Avenue. He planned to spend the rest of his life in England, and wanted to leave a great hotel as memorial. The Hotel Waldorf was the result.

Oscar Tschirky, it is said, passed by while excavations were in progress. "What's going to be built here?" he asked; and learning that it was to be a new hotel, he asked for a job, got one.

The late George C. Boldt, previously manager of a hotel in Philadelphia, was brought to New York to operate the Waldorf and became the genius of its expansion. He induced John Jacob Astor, whose home was adjacent, at 34th Street & Fifth Avenue to build the twin half of the hotel; and this was opened in 1897.

Then, as the Nineteenth Century drew to its close, was the golden time of the Waldorf-Astoria. Prancing, sleek horses drew gleaming broughams and victorias to the doors, porters ushered bejewelled ladies and distinguished gentlemen into the labyrinthine lobby. Hansom cabs picked up titled fares at the portals.

More recently, when hotels, planned on a far more luxurious basis, had been built to compete with the aging dignity of the Waldorf-Astoria, the hotel was taken over by Waldorf-Astoria, Inc., of which General T. Coleman du Pont was a director. It is this corporation which last week sold the property to the Bethlehem Engineering Corp. The new owners stated that they would erect, on the Waldorf-Astoria site, a 50-story office building.

While speculation has run wild over the destiny of the Waldorf-Astoria site, the shadow of a rumor of far more significance has fallen over another stretch of multi-million-dollar Fifth Avenue frontage. Frightened words have trickled from realtor circles to newspaper sanctums, and once or twice a timid hint has been printed.

The story involved the three blocks between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, and 48th & 51st Streets.

A hundred years ago, these three blocks were deeded by the State to Columbia University, as a source of income to support the institution. Authorities at the University grumbled. They would rather have had the privilege, often granted then to colleges, to conduct a lottery. But the years passed, the property became priceless ; and the authorities ceased to chunter, grinned instead.

Now, the story goes, the University has sold all three blocks complete to John Davison Rockefeller Jr., who plans a development almost fantastically elaborate.

Every brick standing on the three blocks will come down.

The central feature of the projected development will be a new home for the Metropolitan Opera, to face Fifth Avenue, between 49th & 50th Streets. On the avenue front, there will be a magnificent esplanade. Viaducts, designed in the futurist style of structural engineering, will take care of automobile traffic on different levels, eliminating the usual traffic jam at the Opera gates on important nights.

Two new streets will be cut through the three blocks, parallel with Fifth Avenue, one of them leading to the rear doors and ramps of the Opera. Along these new streets, and through all the rest of the property, Mr. Rockefeller will erect new buildings for old (skyscrapers, hotels, stores, apartments). And the new streets will be developed as the finest and most exclusive shopping district in the world.

It would be the greatest real estate dicker in the history of New York, since Peter Minuit in 1626 bought Manhattan Island for $24.

Confirmation of this story came last week when the New Yorker said it was so, on good, though anonymous, authority.