The Very Model of a Maitre d'Hotel

Until he walked by an open window of the St. Regis Hotel 51 years ago, John Noosel had planned to study for the priesthood. One look in the window, though, and he became devoted to a career at the luxury hotel.

“I looked inside and saw this — isn’t it wonderful?” Mr. Noosel said the other day, his manicured fingers producing a photograph of the red main dining room, which ceased to operate in 1924.

“I said I must work here,” he reminisced. “It was May 13, 1916. I began the same day. I’ll never forget that day.”

Mr. Noosel is now the maître d’hôtel of the Oak Room, the hotel’s paneled main restaurant. His patrons address him as Mr. John. He began at the St. Regis as a busboy and worked a seven-day week until the mid-1930’s when the waiters at the hotel were unionized. As a maître d’ he is no longer in the union but works a six-day week.

A Long Day

Mr. John has had his job in the Oak Room since the end of World War II. He usually comes in just before 11 A.M. to be ready for the noon rush hour. He leaves just before 10 P.M. after most of the customers have departed.

Mr. John looks as a maître d’hôtel should. He is particularly suited to a hotel that has been a favorite venue for fashionable coming-out parties and the United States address for some of Europe’s élite since it opened in 1904.

Although he hasn’t been back to his native Vienna since 1932, Mr. John retains a pronounced Austrian accent. He has sharply etched features and a square jaw. He is impeccably groomed; his dark hair still is slicked back, every strand in place. He looks directly at his listeners, except when his hazel eyes flash about to take note of entering patrons. He is slender and moves with grace and speed.

“I think I am faster now even than when I was 18,” he said. Though he won’t tell his age, associates say that Mr. John is in his mid-70’s. He looks 20 years younger.

“It helps to be fast to be a good maître d’,” said Mr. John. “But it isn’t necessary. What is the highest thing is to have the confidence of the people so they’ll come back next time.”

“Not do this,” he said, extending a cup with his fingers inside. “Or have this.” He moved a napkin off center.

“You should be alert . . . polite . . . know what your people expect . . . know your wine. And you should know your food. It is like the druggist who prepares your medicine. Everything must be just so.”

Mr. John thinks that tipping habits at the St. Regis have remained the same but eating habits have changed.

“Everything in our society is rush now,” he said. “It is the same with food. People rush through their meals.”

But he thought that the same types of food still were being eaten and the same kind of drinks being drunk. “People have a larger selection of cocktails now, but whisky is whisky, right?”

He added that the St. Regis was still attracting its lofty clientele, which has included five Presidents he served personally.

“I knew the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Morgans and Rockefellers. They all came . . . all the Four Hundreds . . . and still do,” said Mr. John.

He declined to discuss their individual likes and dislikes. “It wouldn’t be right,” he said. “They have relatives who are alive who might object.”

“I get cards from all over the world,” he added. “But I never send any out myself. I am a servant for these people and to send them cards is to put myself in their class, which cannot be.”

Mr. John did talk briefly about one former guest, the late Nikola Tesla, the Yugoslav-born pioneer in high-tension electricity. Mr. John was the only St. Regis employe who could converse with Mr. Tesla in Croatian. Mr. John also speaks Hungarian, German, English and “menu French.”

A bachelor, Mr. John has two homes: a cottage in New Hope, Pa., which he converted from a carriage house, and an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In his apartment bedroom, he keeps a picture of W. Vincent Astor, who owned the hotel when Mr. John was hired.

Built by Astor

Col. John Jacob Astor, who went down with the Titanic in 1912, built the St. Regis at a cost of $5.5-million. The hotel remained with the Astor family until the death of Vincent, Colonel Astor’s son, in 1959.

“He [Vincent] was the most wonderful person I have met,” said Mr. John. “If the Astors were drowning, I would drown for them.”

Mr. John seems only slightly less dedicated to his customers, whom he knows by name if they’ve been to the Oak Room more than once. Getting to know them and their dining traits is a pleasure to Mr. John, despite the long hours involved.

“It is hard work, yes, but when you love it as I do it is not work,” he said. “It is like a musician who is asked to play an encore. Do you think he minds?”