George Charles Boldt Sr. was a Prussian-born American hotelier. A self-made millionaire, he influenced the development of the urban hotel as a civic social center and luxury destination.
Boldt between 1900 and 1910
Engraved 1916 letterhead of The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel with vignettes of the hotel as well as those of the Waldorf and Astoria Hotels in New York all of which were then operating under the management of George Boldt.
Boldt also owned the Waldorf Astoria Segar Company
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City (1890-93 & 1897), Henry J. Hardenbergh, architect (of both hotels)
Robber baron is a term first applied by 19th century muckrakers and others as social criticism to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that
George Boldt
…built the largest hotel the city had ever seen, the 1,090-room The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel (1902–04, now the Hyatt). The enormous fortunes generated by robber barons in the post-Civil War-era led to an unprecedented level of luxurious living for wealthy Americans. Boldt catered to the emerging plutocratic class by…
1904 depiction of an acquisitive and manipulative Standard Oil (founded by John D. Rockefeller) as an all-powerful octopus
1901 US cartoon from Puck depicting John D. Rockefeller as a business despot