George Boldt

George Charles Boldt, Sr. (25 April 1851  – 5 December 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.

Biography

He was born as Georg Karl Boldt in Bergen auf Rügen, Germany on 25 April 1851. He immigrated to the United States in 1864. 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.

Boldt's first hotel was the Bellevue (1881), at the northwest corner of Broad & Walnut Streets, in Philadelphia. He soon bought a competing hotel, the Stratford, at the southwest corner. Two decades later, on the site of the Stratford, he built the largest hotel the city had ever seen, the 1,090-room Bellevue-Stratford Hotel (1902–04, now the Park 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 this new super-rich class, charging the highest prices for the very best, and becoming one of them in the process.