Boldt, George, 1851-1916

George Charles Boldt Sr. (April 25, 1851 – December 5, 1916) 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.[1]

Life and career
He was born as Georg Karl Boldt in Bergen auf Rügen, Prussia, on April 25, 1851.[2][a] He immigrated to the United States in 1864.[1] He began as a kitchen worker in New York and, at age 25, was hired (by his future father-in-law) to manage the dining room of Philadelphia's most exclusive gentlemen's club, The Philadelphia Club.[4]

Boldt's first hotel was the Bellevue (1881), at the northwest corner of Broad & Walnut Streets, in Philadelphia. William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf Hotel (1890–93) in New York City, with Boldt as proprietor. John Jacob Astor IV built the adjoining Astoria Hotel (1897). Boldt mediated between the feuding millionaire cousins, leasing the Astoria himself, and merging the two buildings under his management as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.[ He built Boldt Castle on an island in the Thousand Islands area of New York State. The enormous castle was intended as a gift for his wife, Louise Kehrer Boldt, but when she died suddenly on January 7, 1904, in Manhattan, at the age of 42, construction was halted. The castle, near Alexandria Bay, was restored after decades of vandalism and is now a major summer tourist attraction. Boldt once owned Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower property, receiving it as payment for a debt. From his marriage to Louise Augusta Kehrer, he had two children: George Charles Boldt Jr. and Clover Louise Boldt, later Mrs. Alfred Graham Miles, and three granddaughters.[5]