Raymond Orteig
American hotelier (1870–1939)
Raymond Orteig (1870 – 6 June 1939) was a French American hotel owner in New York City in the early 20th century. He is best known for setting up the $25,000 Orteig Prize in 1919 for the first non-stop transatlantic flight between New York City and Paris, which was claimed by Charles Lindbergh eight years later in 1927.
Early life and business activities
Orteig was born in 1870 in the village of Louvie-Juzon in the region of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in southwest France. After spending part of his childhood looking after his father's sheep in the Pyrenees, Orteig emigrated at age 12, arriving in New York City on 13 October 1882 with 13 francs in his pocket to join an uncle already living there.
He started working as a bar porter at Wengler's Restaurant on William Street on Lower Manhattan.
Gaining experience, he moved on to a position as waiter and then as a maître d' at the Martin Hotel on University Place on 9th Street, owned by Jean-Baptiste Martin. By the time Martin decided to move uptown in 1902, Orteig was in a position to buy the hotel, which he renamed Hotel Lafayette. Together with a business partner, Orteig was also able to lease the rundown Brevoort Hotel on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 8th Street in Greenwich Village, and later refurbish it.
The Lafayette soon became a favourite gathering spot for airmen in the 1910s during and after World War I, and Orteig became acquainted with many of them, including French officers who were on temporary duty in the United States as advisors helping build the nascent United States Air Force. After the end of the World War I, whenever he could, he and his family would spend the summer in Louvie-Juzon.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raymond Orteig” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.