The Plaza Hotel
768 5th Avenue | also 768 Grand Army Plaza, 10 Central Park South, 1 Central Park South | Midtown | built 1907
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Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1890
The first Plaza Hotel opens on the site
An eight-story, 400-room hotel called the Plaza opened at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South on October 1, 1890, in a neo-Classical and Italianate design. It proved unprofitable and looked dated next to newer, more ornamental hotels going up around the city, and it was demolished after only fifteen years to make way for a grander replacement.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1905
Fred Sterry announces the first Plaza will be razed for a taller hotel
On June 12, 1905, only fifteen years after the first Plaza opened, Fred Sterry announced that it would be razed and a new Plaza built on the same site. His plan was a hotel of about seventeen stories with roughly 700 rooms, patterned on London's Carlton Hotel, with a driveway in from the plaza and an Italian garden behind. The old building came down the following month and construction began right away.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1906
A special policeman is killed at the Plaza construction site during a union dispute
Non-union workers were hired by the George A. Fuller Construction Company for the new Plaza, and trouble followed. On the afternoon of July 12, 1906, about thirty ironworkers from the Housesmiths' and Bridgemen's Union beat guards with iron bars, wrenches and sledgehammers, according to the New York Times, and one special policeman died. Despite the sensational trials that followed, construction continued and the hotel was completed in 1907.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1907
Motor cabs line up outside the Plaza on opening day
Untapped New York reports that when the new Plaza opened on October 1, 1907, the first motorized cabs in the city waited at the front of the lobby, run by businessman Harry Allen, who had promised the year before to replace horse-drawn cabs with automobiles. Horse-drawn cabs stood at the far end of the street, and the hotel still offers both.
Source: Untapped New York
- 1907
Mrs. Patrick Campbell lights a cigarette in the Palm Court and starts a scandal
About a month after the Plaza opened, the British actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who was in New York in Hedda Gabler, dined in the Palm Court and smoked a cigarette, which women did not do in public then. According to Untapped New York, the headwaiter told her to put it out and she answered that this was a free country. The restaurant set up screens around her, and the episode set off a press debate about smoking.
Source: Untapped New York
- 1907
Henry Hardenbergh's 19-story Plaza Hotel opens
Architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh's French Renaissance replacement for the original Plaza opened on October 1, 1907, after 27 months of construction that cost $12.5 million. The 800-room hotel, modeled partly on London's Carlton Hotel, drew guests including Mark Twain, Diamond Jim Brady and actress Lillian Russell on opening night.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1909
A self-styled Hungarian princess moves in with a lion cub
Painter Elisabeth Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy, who used the title "princess" through marriage, took up residence at the Plaza in 1909 with 12 servants and a menagerie that included a lion cub named Goldfleck, which she walked in Central Park and kept in her bathtub. She painted sitters including Theodore Roosevelt and, in 1916, the only known portrait of Nikola Tesla, before unpaid bills forced her out.
Source: Ephemeral New York
- 1921
A 19-story annex and new ballroom open at the Plaza as the Champagne Porch disappears
With Prohibition under way, Fred Sterry decided to remove the Champagne Porch, a terrace used only by the very wealthy, and put a larger entrance in its place. Warren and Wetmore's 19-story annex on 58th Street added a Terrace Room restaurant, a ballroom and 350 more suites. It opened on October 14, 1921 with an event in the ballroom, though it was not formally completed until April 1922.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1943
Atlas Corporation buys the Plaza with hotelier Conrad Hilton
Atlas Corporation bought the Plaza Hotel in October 1943 for $7.4 million, collaborating with hotelier Conrad Hilton, the first of several ownership changes over the following decades. The hotel passed to Boston industrialist A.M. Sonnabend in 1953, then to his Childs Company in 1955, to Western International Hotels in 1974, and to Donald Trump in 1988.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
Frank Lloyd Wright keeps a Plaza suite while designing the Guggenheim
While he worked on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue, architect Frank Lloyd Wright often stayed at the Plaza. He maintained a suite on the second floor from 1954 to 1959. Wright admired Hardenbergh's exterior as an early skyscraper with a human sense, unlike the later towers he called monstrous.
“Frank Lloyd Wright often stayed at the Plaza while designing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue, maintaining a suite on the second floor between 1954 and 1959.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1955
Kay Thompson's Eloise gives the Plaza its most famous fictional resident
Kay Thompson published the first Eloise book in 1955. Its heroine is a girl who lives in a room at the top of the Plaza, together with her nanny, her pug Weenie and her turtle Skipperdee. The series produced four sequels, a film and many toys, and the hotel now has an Eloise children's menu, an Eloise shop on the hotel's lower level and an Eloise Suite.
Source: Untapped New York
- 1956
Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe face the press in the Terrace Room
The Terrace Room often served for press conferences and receptions. In 1956 Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe used it to talk about their upcoming film The Prince and the Showgirl. A dozen years later, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor held a press conference in the same room about their film Doctor Faustus.
“…it hosted a 1956 press conference where Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe talked about their upcoming film The Prince and the Showgirl.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
The Beatles stay at the Plaza on their first American visit
In February 1964, during their first trip to the United States, the Beatles stayed at the Plaza. The hotel's Terrace Room, often used for press conferences and receptions, was opened to visitors who wanted pictures with the band during the stay.
“…the Beatles stayed at the Plaza Hotel during their first visit to the United States in February 1964.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1966
Truman Capote hosts the Black and White Ball at the Plaza
Writer Truman Capote held his Black and White Ball in the Plaza's grand ballroom in 1966, with Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham among the guests photographed there that night. The party has remained one of the events most closely associated with the hotel's history as a venue for high-profile gatherings.
Source: The Bowery Boys
- 1969
Women's protest ends the Oak Room's men-only weekday lunches
The Oak Room began life as the hotel's men's bar, and men-only weekday lunches continued there. Untapped New York reports that a protest led by Betty Friedan and members of the National Organization for Women pushed the Plaza to change the policy in 1969. The room itself remained until 2011, when it closed following a dispute between the hotel and the room's tenants.
Source: Untapped New York
- 1969
The Landmarks Commission designates the Plaza over an owners' objection
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Plaza on December 9, 1969, after hearings in 1966. Five witnesses spoke in favor, while the lawyer for the owners opposed designation. Its report called the Plaza the most elegant of the city's great hotels and an outstanding example of American hotel architecture of the century's first decade.
“Five witnesses spoke in favor of designation. ... At that time the lawyer representing the owners opposed designation.”
- 1970
A gunman fires at Taiwan's vice premier Chiang Ching-kuo at the Plaza
On April 24, 1970, Peter Huang and his brother-in-law Cheng Tzu-tsai, activists in a Taiwanese independence group, tried to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo, vice premier of the Republic of China, at the Plaza. Huang approached with a gun, but a Diplomatic Security Service agent pushed him aside and the bullet struck the hotel's revolving doors. Huang pleaded guilty in 1971 but fled after being released on bail.
“…a Diplomatic Security Service special agent pushed him out of the way, causing the bullet to strike the hotel's revolving doors.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1985
Finance ministers sign the Plaza Accord to push the dollar down
On September 22, 1985, finance ministers from France, West Germany, Japan, Britain and the United States signed an agreement at the Plaza to lower the dollar's value against the franc, the mark, the yen and the pound by intervening in currency markets. The signers included James Baker for the United States and Nigel Lawson for Britain. The deal is known as the Plaza Accord.
“…joint agreement signed on September 22, 1985, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
Donald Trump buys the Plaza and calls it his Mona Lisa
Donald Trump bought the Plaza in 1988 for $407.5 million. He told New York magazine he had purchased a masterpiece, not a building, comparing it to the Mona Lisa, and said he had made a deal he could never justify on economic terms, however well the hotel did. His wife Ivana was the hotel's president when the couple divorced.
Source: Untapped New York
- 2008
The renovated Plaza reopens with condominiums and a shopping area
The Plaza closed on April 30 for a three-year, $400 million renovation by Costas Kondylis & Partners, with interiors by Annabelle Selldorf. It reopened on March 1, 2008, with 282 hotel rooms, 181 condominiums and a shopping area. The glass ceiling of the Palm Court was restored, and Selldorf kept the oak paneling and murals of the Oak Room and Oak Bar.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- Plaza HotelWikipedia
- Henry J. Hardenbergh's Plaza Hotel - 768 Fifth AvenueDaytonian in Manhattan
- The eccentric Hungarian princess who moved into the Plaza Hotel with 12 servants and a lion cubEphemeral New York
- What a Midtown lunch counter’s Thanksgiving menu says about dining in 1917Ephemeral New York
- The Wild West street names once proposed for the Upper West SideEphemeral New York
- What became of the first, short-lived Plaza HotelEphemeral New York
- A 1960s “party of the century” at the Plaza HotelEphemeral New York
- The Fifth Avenue entrance to Central ParkEphemeral New York
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