The Waldorf Astoria’s detectives.

Inside the century-old private records of the Waldorf Astoria’s detectives.: As luxurious a home as the new Waldorf Astoria will be, however, there is one amenity from its golden early days that it almost certainly will lack. That is a set of in-house detectives. The records of those detectives, which can be seen today in the hotel’s papers at the New York Public Library, show an almost unimaginable level of kid-glove service and provide a tantalizing window into the high-end hotel life of a century ago.