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A 1.6 million square foot, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. That is how architect Frank Mahan, from the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, described the Waldorf Astoria’s near $2-billion renovation project on a recent behind-the-scenes tour. “If you were here a few months ago, or a year ago, you would see workers undertaking restoration in these spaces that we’re walking through with a fine point paintbrush.” When the Waldorf Astoria opened over a century ago, the hotel became so synonymous with high society gatherings that one of its corridorswhere the elite came to show off their finest attirewas known as Peacock Alley.” The hotel quickly became a symbol of New York’s glamour, ambition, and what the author Henry James called the hotel spirita place where everyone was equal as long as they could pay the price of entry. [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] When I visited in late April, the ambition was evident in the constellation of workers buzzing around the premises. Some were tearing plastic wrap from freshly delivered armchairs. Others were busying around Cole Porter’s grand piano, which was tauntingly shrouded under a protective cloak. But if the renovation was one giant puzzle, then these were the last pieces. This week, after much delay, the reimagined Art Deco landmark has finally reopened. It is as spectacular as New Yorkers deserve it to be. Peacock Alley [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] Midtowns belle of the ball Spanning an entire block in Midtown Manhattan, the Waldorf Astoria was the tallest and largest hotel in the world when it opened in 1931, to a design by Schultze & Weaver. Quickly, the Art Deco landmark, which hosted presidents, royalty, celebrities, and major global events, became synonymous with power and cultural cachet. Over the years, however, the celebrated building underwent a patchwork of renovations that gradually chipped away at its character. The lobby was reconfigured, cooling towers were added to the roof, and by 2017, when the entire hotel closed, just one of the original 5,400 windows remained. Basildon Room [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] Eight years later, the Waldorf Astoria has undergone a wildly complex transformation that converted some hotel rooms into opulent residences designed by top-tier designers, and restored every inch of the place, including signature venues like the Grand Ballroom and Peacock Alley. The project was slowed down by the fact that 60,000 square feet of the building were designated as a landmark. (This makes the Waldorf Astoria the fourth largest interior landmark in New York City.) Some parts of the building were meticulously restored to reflect the building’s original 1931 design; others were modernized to meet 21st-century standards. “It’s an awesome responsibility because in a sense, [the building is] owned by New Yorkers, but you can’t be afraid,” Mahan told me. “You have to allow change in order for it to have a new life.” Silver Corridor [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] Instead of freezing the building in time, or even gutting its identity, the Waldorf has merged old and new. At a time when countless other historic buildings are being converted into private condos, or getting demolished altogether, its rebirth offers a blueprint for how landmark preservation can coexist with new investment. Eight years after the hotel closed, the myth of the Waldorf Astoria lives on. Residenial Lobby [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] The most iconic address The most anticipated change has been the Waldorf Astoria residences. These high-end apartments generated up-front sales revenue, which helped finance the hotel’s renovation. Before it closed, the hotel counted 1,400 guest rooms. Now, that number has been reduced to 375 rooms operated by Hiltonand 375 residential units designed by French interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot. Today, for the first time ever, those with enough disposable income can own an apartment at The Waldorf and call one of the worlds most iconic addresses their home. [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] The residential wing comes with a separate entrance, a private porte cochre, and the sort of detail youd expect from a luxury enclave carved out of a hotel this storiedlike a cleverly disguised concierge closet that can be accessed both from the apartment and the corridor, allowing staff to deliver packages, laundry, or room service without setting foot inside. Studios start at $1.875 million and four bedrooms begin at $18.75 million. (At the time of writing, 25 residences have already closed, and many residents have moved in, including the managing director of Waldorf Astoria New York, Luigi Romaniello; two penthouses, housed in the copper-clad towers, are yet to be unveiled.) [Photo: Colin Miller/courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] The residences are spectacular, but the real gift is the public-facing side of the hotel. Average New Yorkers can now walk up the steps of the Park Avenue Lobby, take in the grandeur of the interiors while shortcutting through the building, and exit onto Lexington without spending a single penny. This journey was possible before the hotel closed, but todayat long lastit looks like it was always meant to. [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] Going back to 1931 To return the Waldorf to its former glory, SOM consulted archival black-and-white photographs, specification books, and original drawings from the Schultze & Weaver collection at the WolfsonianFIU museum in Florida. On the outside, the team restored the buildings bronze entryways and distinct brickwork, and replaced every windowexpanding 900 of them to let in more daylight. They removed the cooling towers to reveal a skylight that once crowned the Starlight Ballroom, where Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra once dazzled captivated audiences. That space has now been reimagined as a 25-meter indoor swimming pooldubbed the Starlight Poolbathed in natural light. [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] Inside, they worked with French designer Pierre-Yves Rochon to make the Waldorf look both old and new again. In the Park Avenue lobby, they stripped back the ceiling, updated the underlying lighting infrastructure, and rebuilt it to match an old design they had seen in an archival photograph. It was a black and white photograph, but Mahans team still noticed that the ceiling reflected light in an unusual way. Pairing that with notes from the spec book, they discovered the central marble panel had once been backlit. “That was the case with many of the spaces,” he says. “People had been walking through them and thinking, ‘oh, thats a historic hotel, this is the way it’s always been,’ but in fact, it changed many times,” he says. Now, the new lobby looks brighterand closer to the original architects intent. In the check-in lobby, the iconic Waldorf Astoria clock that once served as a meeting point for New Yorkers, was disassembled, cleaned, re-gilded, and re-silvered. In the Silver Gallery upstairs, art conservation firm ArtCare painstakingly restored a series of murals depicting the 12 months and four seasons. In photos Mahan shows me, the murals look muddied by time. The restored versions you can see today appear to be glowing with light. [Photo: courtesy Waldorf Astoria New York] In the check-in lobby, the architects reduced the number of reception desks from a seemingly endless row of desks that Mahan says made it look like a train station, to just two. And in the Grand Ballroom, where the Beatles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, they relined the walls with genuine silver leaf and acoustically isolated the entire space. In the past, theyve either had to keep the volume down or not rent out the rooms around the ballroom because the vibrations would bother people in the surrounding rooms, says Mahan. Now, this space basically floats in the center of the building. Perhaps most impressively, SOM reinstated the original volume and drama of the buildings public passagewaythe one that allows you to traverse the block from Park Avenue to Lexington. In 1931, Schultze & Weaver designed the corridor as a cinematic journey through five distinct but connected lobbies that widened and narrowed to create moments of compression and release. That would’ve added to the drama of the space, says Mahan. By 2017, some lobbies had become cluttered with retail build-outs and clashing materials. Now, it flows like the choreographed experience it once was. The building has survived COVID-19 delays, supply chain issues, and even a corruption scandalonly to reopen at a troubled time for the tourism industry. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the U.S. is on track to lose $12.5 billion in travel revenue this year, which makes it the only country out of 184 analyzed thats projected to see tourism dollars decline in 2025. If all else fails (it likely wont considering the target clientele) New Yorkers will at least have that glorious shortcut.
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E-Commerce
Since the Trump administration first took office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has followed a similar formula for most of its posts on X, which are typically celebrating mass deportations, using dehumanizing language like criminal illegal aliens, and defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Recently, though, the account has taken a detour to post a different genre of content: aspirational pro-America artwork. On July 1, the DHS posted an image of a painting by the late Thomas Kinkade titled Morning Pledge, which shows a suburban neighborhood with a church and an American flag. Above it, the DHSs caption reads: Protect the Homeland. Then, on July 14, the DHS followed up with a piece by contemporary artist Morgan Weistling that depicted a family of early settlers in the American West. The painting, which shows two parents holding a newborn baby inside a covered wagon, is captioned: Remember your Homelands Heritage. New Life in a New Land Morgan Weistling. [Screenshot: DHS/X.com] Following the post, Weistling clarified that the DHS used his painting without permission, and that it invented an entirely new title for his work. But beyond ethical concerns about permission and copyright, the DHSs recent posts raise more pressing questions about what kind of America represents the organization’s concept of an ideal place to liveand who is included in that vision. Taken without permission After the DHS posted an image of his work, Weistling took to his official website, as well as to Facebook and Instagram, to set the record straight. (The Facebook and Instagram messages have since been deleted.) [Screenshot: Morgan Weistling/Facebook] So I was having a nice little vacation with my family when I get a message from a friend that the Department of Homeland Security has posted a painting of mine and its going viral, Weistling wrote on his Facebook page. As of this writing, the DHSs post has 19.1 million views and 34,000 likes. In a separate message on his website, Weistling added: They used a painting I did 5 years ago and re-titled it and posted it without my permission. It is a violation of my copyright on the painting. It was a surprise to me and I am trying to gather how this happened and what to do next. [Screenshot: morganweistling.com] According to Weistlings website, the painting used by the DHS is actually titled A Prayer for a New Liferather than the DHSs altered version of New Life in a New Land. This updated title, alongside the caption Remember your Homelands Heritage, places outsized emphasis on the land itself. Taken together with the paintings scene, the post seems to be skirting just around the edge of endorsing manifest destiny, or the assumption of American settlers inherent right to land in the West. Weistling did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for a comment. A Manifest Destiny aesthetic Since the Trump administration took office in January, the DHS’s X account has become an active forum for the agency to promote President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. In early July alone, the DHS has already posted several images callously shrugging off the human suffering caused by the president’s deportation policies, which, most recently, include a new detention center for migrants built in the Florida Everglades. One repost from the White Houses official account shows a cup of coffee with the phrase Fire up the deportation planes added atop the liquid. Another image shows a border patrol vehicle in the desert, facing a distant sunset. The caption in neon green and white boasts: ZERO Releases in June. Lowest Month of Illegal Alien Encounters EVER. And a third, in a near-parody of this administrations extreme stance on immigration, shows a mock poster of the film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial with the text: Even E.T. knew when it was time to GO HOME. Take control of your departure using the CBP Home App. Between these posts are countless images of Black and brown people arrested by ICE for alleged crimes. The pivot to posting Kinkade’s and Weistlings works might be tonally jarring, but it’s indicative of the broader message the DHS account is trying to send. Weistlings body of work is almost entirely concerned with early American settlerspresenting an uncomplicated view of Americas origins, with scenes featuring a family happily riding west in a stagecoach or a rancher diligently tending his herd. Its a perspective that does not appear to include reference to Indigenous people. Meanwhile, Kinkade, who became notable for commercializing his work in the 80s and 90s, catered specifically to a Christian middle-class audience (a community that he was later criticized for allegedly exploiting). An entire section of his studios website is dedicated to Patriotic Art, the bulk of which highlights iconography like the American flag, the Statue of Liberty, and in one instance, Captain America. In Kinkades 2012 obituary in New York magazine, author Jerry Saltz wrote that the artist represented the epitome of sentimental, illustrational, conservative art. Both Weistling and Kinkade present an idyllic (and notably Eurocentric) portrayal of American societyone that, perhaps, evokes a fictional past thats implied by the phrase Make America Great Again. When the DHS urges its followers to Protect the Homeland, the question becomes: protect it for whom?
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E-Commerce
These specialty-made purses double as a mobile DJ kit. That’s because Nik Bentel Studio‘s newest purse, called the Tati Fte Bag, is actually wearable tech. The bag comes in two models: The $350 Speaker Bag, which pairs with bluetooth, and the $400 Mixer Bag, which has four input channels and is compatible with CD players, computers, phones, and amps. The bags started as a thought experiment, Nik Bentel tells Fast Company. “What if your everyday bag looked and felt like a piece of audio gear?” [Photos: Nik Bentel Studio] The resulting bags have room to hold your phone, chapstick, and mints, but they also have about three hours of play time each. Made from an acrylic shell, the material was chosen because it “allowed us to fully lean into the language of tech objects,” Bentel says. “It has this glossy, rigid, futuristic feel that instantly evokes gadgetry and display cases.” [Photo: Nik Bentel Studio] This is a purse meant to look like a gadget, not the other way around. “We wanted the bags to feel like they were pulled directly from a DJ booth,” Bentel says. Using fabric or leather would have softened the concept too much while acrylic gave the bags a “clean, synthetic, almost sci-fi finish.” The biggest challenges were precision, since acrylic has to be cut perfectly, and scale. [Photo: Nik Bentel Studio] “We wanted them to feel bold and graphic, but still functional as bags,” he says. “And of course, getting the buttons, knobs, and laser-etched details just right took a lot of back-and-forth to make sure they captured that playful realism.” Bentel has made clever, whimsical bags before like one made out of electrical cords and another for a single slice of pizza. The Tati Fte Bag brings that same sense of humor to sound. The rise of digital music and streaming has put a premium on physical music experiences like LPs and helped bring back the turntable. A boom box that’s a purse takes that impulse and makes it wearable.
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E-Commerce
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