The Waldorf Astoria’s New Condos Took a Heavy Legal Lift
The landmarked nature of a property that was going to also be part hotel presented attorneys with a maze of challenges
By Larry Getlen March 17, 2025 10:30 am
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In the late 1880s, the Astors, one of New York City’s most prominent families, lived in two neighboring mansions on 34th Street.
Despite the Astors’ blood relations, the occupants of the two homes hated each other.
The complications this would engender seemed to foreshadow the property’s complicated future — which, as of last month, includes the debut of newly developed luxury condos following a series of legal acrobatics stretching back to before the pandemic.
Living in the epitome of luxury was never quite enough for the Astors.
“It was William Waldorf Astor in one mansion and his aunt, Caroline Astor, who lived next door, and who was the very height of society, and they did not get along at all,” said historian Kevin Draper, who runs New York Historical Tours. “Caroline said that everyone had to refer to her as the Mrs. Astor. But other members of the family said, ‘Who do you think you are?’ Because there are other women in this family that are Mrs. Astor.”
At a certain point, the animus grew so heated that William Waldorf Astor decided to tear down his mansion and turn it into a hotel. Named to resemble the Astor family’s home city of Walldorf, Germany, the 450-room Waldorf Hotel opened in 1893 and immediately became the most luxurious hotel in New York.
And it might have remained the greatest hotel ever built out of pure spite if Caroline’s branch of the family hadn’t retaliated in kind.
“You’re living in a nice mansion when all of a sudden, you look next door and you have this huge hotel,” said Draper. “So then [her son] John Jacob Astor IV decides to fight back. They’re thinking of tearing down their mansion and building a horse stable to spite the hotel, because the smell would be terrible. Then they realize that money-wise, you’re not going to make a lot of money off of a horse stable. So they think, ‘Why don’t we just build a bigger hotel?’ So they build a bigger hotel right next door, right up to the property line. So now the buildings are touching, and it’s the Astoria Hotel, and it’s much bigger.”
In time, the branches of the family realized that the feud was bad for business, and combined the two buildings to create one grand hotel: the Waldorf-Astoria. (The hyphen was dropped in 2009, though it remains carved into the building’s facade.)
The grandeur their pettiness created became one of the world’s legendary hotels and, in time, luxury residences.
Throughout the mid- to late 20th century, the Waldorf Astoria, which was built anew on Park Avenue and East 50th Street in 1931 as high society moved uptown, became home for some of the country’s most sought-after talents. Legendary composer Cole Porter lived there for three decades, supposedly writing some of his most famous songs within its walls. And upon Porter’s death in 1964, Frank Sinatra moved in, making Porter’s massive five-bedroom suite his home until the late 1980s.
Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe and even Gen. Douglas MacArthur all called the Waldorf Astoria home.
Given its impressive history, current owners or renovators have to account for not just immense practical considerations, but also the weight of the hotel’s considerable contributions to New York City’s history, prestige and glamour.
This year, the Waldorf Astoria is beginning a new phase of its existence.
The hotel/home was purchased from Hilton Worldwide Holdings for $1.95 billion by the China-based Anbang Insurance Group in 2014 and shuttered for renovations in 2017, with the legendary building set to be transformed into 375 luxury condos, 375 hotel rooms to be managed by Hilton, and some retail as well.
The first of the property’s new condos have now sold — units start at $1.875 million and go to $18.75 million — and the hotel portion is slated to reopen later this year.
The law firm Kramer Levin was brought on board around the time of the acquisition not just to facilitate the transformation, but, initially, to also assist with the hotel’s modernization.
Given the property’s rich history, the first significant endeavor was determining which potential changes might be derailed by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission. The hotel’s exterior was designated a New York City landmark in 1993, but portions of the interior weren’t so designated until 2017.
“The concern was that once the use of the building changed, spaces that might have been formerly public would become privatized. And one of the requirements for interior landmarks is that they have to be customarily accessible to the public,” said Valerie Campbell, a partner at Kramer Levin.
Campbell worked closely with the Landmarks Preservation Commission and project architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to determine which areas targeted for renovation would be designated as protected landmarks, and how to best design the property around them.
After a process of about six months, the commission made its determinations, designating many interior spaces of the hotel as landmarks. These included the main lobby, many of the guest rooms, and the hotel’s ballroom.
Then, Campbell worked with SOM to determine how to best execute the architecture firm’s vision while preserving any area given landmark status.
“One of the programmatic needs was to get a distinct residential entrance to the condos that was separate from the hotel entrance,” said Campbell by way of example. “That required a lot of back and forth with the architects and the commission because the residential entrance needed to be distinct from the hotel entrance, but not detract from that entrance, which was the historic entrance to the building.”
The hotel’s raised entrance generated much discussion after the owners briefly considered altering it to make it more level to the street.
“When the Waldorf was first built in that location, the train tracks for the New York Central Railroad were close to street level. So you were literally walking over tracks,” said Kramer Levin partner and real estate chair Jay Neveloff.
But the landmarks commission made it clear that this change would not be acceptable.
“Those sections are part of the designated interior — that whole lobby,” said Campbell. “So those levels became part of the designated interior landmarks.”
Another area that landmarking affected was the hotel’s windows.
“The Starlight Lounge, where I’ve been to a number of wedding ceremonies, is now a fabulous pool area for the residences,” said Neveloff. “They kept the height and the windows off the exterior, and there are glass partitions looking down from the exercise rooms onto this pool area. It’s terrific.”
The Plaza Hotel underwent a similar conversion back in the mid-aughts. Miki Naftali, founder and CEO of Naftali Group, purchased that hotel for $675 million in 2004, and spent $400 million restoring the interiors and converting it into 180 private condos, 152 pied-à-terre hotel-condos, 130 hotel rooms and 160,000 square feet of retail space.
Naftali remembers the many challenges landmark considerations can present for this type of conversion.
“Not only was the Plaza a New York landmark building, it was also a federal historic building,” said Naftali. “And, in addition to that, [landmarks officials] declared seven of the interior rooms as landmarks. So we had a lot of complications, not only with the facade, but, for example, if we wanted to change windows, or introduce new mechanical systems. There are a lot of things that you need to get approved through the landmarks committee, with excessive approvals needed before you start to do the work.”
Naftali said that the greatest challenge to a conversion of this sort is dealing with unknowns.
“In a new construction, the biggest unknown is what is below grade,” he said. “Once you’re done with the foundation and start to go vertically, everything is clear. But when you deal with a 100-year-old building that has undergone multiple renovations and new mechanical systems, every corner you open, every ceiling you open, every new riser creates issues. That makes it very difficult to estimate the budget or the schedule, because you can have a lot of setbacks.”
Even beyond landmarking considerations, the Waldorf’s formative negotiations required examining every aspect of the building to determine its future.
“I remember some internal discussions about whether the ballroom should remain,” said Neveloff. “There was a clear consensus that the ballroom at the Waldorf is an asset of New York City. It was never a serious discussion. There were never any big debates. The debates were about tempering the architect’s creativity with the need to preserve history.”
Once these issues were dealt with, Kramer Levin had to establish the condominium’s governing documents in a way that accounted for the presence of the hotel, including a deal that had been signed with Hilton to manage its operations, alongside the for-sale condos and some retail.
“Usually, there isn’t a negotiation of condominium documents. As condo counsel, we just implement the structure that our client wants to implement,” said Josh Winefsky, a partner at Kramer Levin. “But, here, we had to form the condominium’s governing documents for the entire building, ensuring that the rights and obligations of the hotel component were captured relative to the rights and obligations of the residential for-sale component.”
Kramer Levin had to negotiate with Hilton to ensure that the agreement lived up to the brand standards of both Hilton and the Waldorf Astoria while also establishing substantial rights for the residents.
“We negotiated the condominium documents for probably a year,” said Winefsky, “making sure that all of the various rights that Hilton required were built into it while still preserving the ability of the residential component to operate with some freedom. That was a significant and unique challenge. We don’t end up doing that often.”
Part of this negotiation was determining which of the legendary luxury hotel’s services and amenities would be available to condo residents.
“You have this world-class hotel and the services it offers. Those services are part of the marketing of the residential sales process,” said Winefsky. “We took a lot of time negotiating how residential unit owners can benefit from the services that are provided by the hotel and not the building as a whole and baking that process into our condominium documents, as well as separately identifying other services they would have to pay for.”
Winefsky cited the hotel’s concierge services, which will be available to Waldorf Astoria residents.
“You don’t get that if you’re just buying an apartment at an ordinary luxury condo building,” said Winefsky. “You’re getting the Waldorf Astoria hotel’s personal concierge service at your disposal. That’s baked in. To the extent that there are Waldorf-branded events happening, because you’re an owner in the building, you get to enjoy those.”
Other hotel services will be available to residents for a fee, including housekeeping and valet services as well as in-room dining.
Winefsky, who notes that part of the reason for the long negotiation was that they were contending with factors that all parties involved rarely dealt with, compares the end result to a joint venture agreement.
“You’re effectively setting out the rights and obligations of partners,” said Winefsky. “So the way it was resolved in a lot of instances was going line by line through 220 pages of condominium documents, making sure that whenever there is something that is operationally specific, that it’s being addressed to a level that satisfies Hilton’s requirements for branded standards while also satisfying the developer’s desire to maintain a marketable product.”
With the result of all this work now coming to fruition, the Waldorf Astoria is poised to usher in the next phase of its history, introducing younger generations to the prestige and glamour New York City has enjoyed for the past century.
“I think it’s going to be one of the hot hotels again,” said historian Draper. “It still has that name, and younger people are very into these older hotels. It’s amazing how popular some of these places have become. I think it’s definitely going to be a destination.”
