First Since the Waldorf

The King and Queen of Siam were on hand for the first luncheon. President Herbert Hoover spoke from Washington. Even in the chauffeurs' waiting room, champagne flowed. Mr. Bagby's Musical Mornings were scheduled in the ballroom (Kirsten Flagstad, Giovanni Martinelli, et al.). Thus, 30 years ago, the new Waldorf-Astoria opened on Manhattan's Park Avenue, setting a tone of stately, if slightly too chromium-plated, elegance that lasted nearly into the days of Hiltonization. This week, for the first time since the Waldorf debut, a new hotel opened in Manhattan, but the atmosphere was different.

President Kennedy was busy, so the owners of the Summit, a brother team named Larry and Bob Tisch, settled for the last best thing, Mayor Robert Wagner, and a monster cocktail party with a flack-picked guest list. The kings, if any, have yet to make their appearance, the chauffeurs' waiting room has given way to a drive-yourself rental agency, and as for the late Mr. Bagby, he was not even replaced by Muzak. The one link to the Waldorf era: Claudius Charles Philippe, for many years the Waldorf's shrewd general factotum, is now the Tisches' executive vice president and general manager.

Dying Arts. Claude Philippe knows how radically the hotel business has changed since the Waldorf and he were young. The success of a hotel today, says he, depends on a "judicious use of space," not mere luxury. "While I think waste space is the epitome of luxury, we have to decide what kind of waste space suits today's living and today's economics. We don't need a reading room or writing room any more. No one uses them; correspondence is a dying art. We have no need of a tearoom."

If judicious use of space is indeed essential, the Summit rates high. The $25 million building is tucked in neatly on a 100-ft. by 320-ft. corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, has 800 rooms, 21 stories, and looks compact enough to be stored in the Waldorf lobby. It is the handiwork of Architect Morris Lapidus, whose chief triumphs are the Eden Roc and Fontainebleau hotels in Miami Beach. Thus the decor can be described as something between Bronx baroque and Mexicali modrun. A graceful, serpentine curve of the long exterior wall on 51st Street is a welcome change from Manhattan's orange-crate rectangularity, but the sea-green color of that wall mocks the eye. In the lobby and other interior areas, the combination of good materials --plastics, woods, ceramics, marble, bright metal--sometimes startles, often stuns.

Crossed Keys. The service features, on the other hand, ought to intrigue the customers: a 255-car underground garage, extension phones in the bathrooms (an extra washbasin is placed in a separate, screened-off vanity), a refrigerator-bar and an electric shoe polisher in each room. If these gimmicks sound a little too mechanical, at the expense of human service, there will also be multilingual doormen and desk clerks, and, above all, that grand old European institution, the concierge. "The European concierge," one traveler has explained, "is a combination of all-round fixer and archangel, the man who sees and knows everything and can do almost anything. He must combine the talents of a living telephone directory, tourist guide, psychologist, businessman, detective, procurer, blackmailer and infinitely tolerant uncle."

Whether this wide and strange office will ever fit into the American pattern of compartmentalized efficiency remains to be seen. The incumbent, New York-born Alfred Rinaldi, a veteran tourist guide, is nervous as he puts on his frock coat with the traditional crossed keys and takes up his position behind the desk. Says he defiantly: "I will try to get to the bottom of any trouble there may be."

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