Dear Helaine and Joe: What can you tell me about this lamp that we inherited from my husband's family? His mother told me she believed it was obtained after a remodeling of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in the early 1900s. The metal base is damaged from salty air. We think of it as being a cloisonne-style lamp and would be interested in any further history and its monetary value.
Thank you. — A.L.
Dear A.L.: This is a floor lamp, and we believe it has always been electrified.
Our opinion might have been changed if we could have seen the top of the piece, but in the photographs we have, the top part of the fixture is hidden by a silk shade. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel now stands on Park Avenue in Manhattan, but originally it was located on Astor family property along Fifth Avenue. It started as two buildings, the Waldorf Hotel and the Astoria Hotel (thus the amalgamation of the names).
The passageway between the two buildings was known as Peacock Alley. This symbol of luxurious accommodations was opened in 1893 and torn down in 1929 to make room for the building of the Empire State Building. The name "Waldorf" was derived from Waldorf, Germany, the ancestral home of the Astor family.
The name was "The Waldorf-Astoria" before 1949, when Conrad Hilton bought the establishment and gave the name a double hyphen Waldorf=Astoria. All hyphens were removed from the name in 2009, but in the early 20th century New Yorkers used to say "Meet me at the hyphen," meaning meet me.