2.  The Site of The Original Hotel is Now The Empire State Building

John Jacob Astor IV died in 1912 in the sinking of the Titanic. In 1919, William died of a heart attack. The land on which the grand hotel sat was sold to a developer in 1928. The hotel was demolished and in its place, the Empire State Building was erected.

Before the original Waldrof Astoria was demolished, a man by the name of Lucius Boomer, who owned and managed a number of hotels, purchased the Waldorf Astoria hotel name for $1 and then proceeded to build a new hotel on Park Avenue at its current location. Opening in 1931, the new hotel by the same name was 47-stories tall with 2,200 rooms and took up the entire city block from 49th Street to 50th Street and from Park Avenue to Lexington Avenue.  It was the largest hotel in the world at the time.