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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  The Plaza, the Camera, and the Century

  PART ONE: THE SITE

  The New York Skating Club

  The First Plaza Hotel

  The Fifth Avenue Door, Circa 1895

  At The Plaza, 1898

  Demolition of the First Plaza Hotel

  February 5, 1906

  September 15, 1906

  October 7, 1906

  PART TWO: THE LEGEND

  October 1, 1907

  Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Signs the Opening-Day Register

  The Fifty-ninth Street Lobby

  The Tearoom (the Palm Court)

  Mrs. Patrick Campbell Lights a Cigarette

  The Men’s Cafe (the Edwardian Room)

  The Men’s Bar (the Oak Room)

  The Plaza Crest

  The Dining Room (the Fifth Avenue Lobby)

  Luncheon Menu, July 4, 1911

  The Ballroom

  The Plaza and the Taxicab

  The Cornelius Vanderbilt Mansion

  The Sherman Monument

  Enrico Caruso and the Magneta Clock

  The Postcard Craze and The Plaza

  Princess Lwoff-Parlaghy Adopts a Pet

  The Plaza Lighted for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration

  The Pulitzer Fountain

  F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

  New York, 1930

  The Persian Room

  The Persian Room Murals

  Persian Room Menu, October 14, 1937

  Conrad Hilton Buys The Plaza

  The Incomparable Hildegarde

  Colonel Serge Obolensky

  The Oak Bar

  The Shinn Murals

  The George M. Cohan Corner

  The Cecil Beaton Suite

  Greta Garbo in the Cecil Beaton Suite

  The Duke and Duchess of Windsor Celebrate an Anniversary

  The Rendez-vous

  Marlene Dietrich in Residence

  The Christian Dior Suite

  The Frank Lloyd Wright Suite

  Frank Lloyd Wright Has His Picture Taken

  Frank Lloyd Wright … On Record

  Henry Dreyfuss Transforms the Persian Room

  In the Persian Room

  Miss Kay Thompson

  Eloise

  Patricia Kennedy Weds Peter Lawford

  Marilyn Monroe and the Broken Shoulder Strap

  Jayne Mansfield in the Tricycle Garage

  Edwardian Room Menu, November 8, 1956

  Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest

  Jazz at The Plaza

  Ike and Mamie and Jack and Jackie

  The Second British Invasion of America

  The Beatles’ Press Conference

  The Two Eloise Portraits

  Trader Vic’s

  Mr. Capote Throws a Party

  The Black and White Ball

  Svetlana

  Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite

  Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor Meet the Press

  Julie Nixon Weds David Eisenhower

  NOW Stages a Protest

  Mrs. Aristotle Onassis

  The Movies and The Plaza

  The Green Tulip Debacle

  John and Yoko in the Oyster Bar

  Donald Trump Buys The Plaza

  Home Alone 2

  Red Grooms at The Plaza

  The Plaza Lighted for a Lingerie Show

  Time Line

  Filmography

  Bibliography

  Illustration Credits

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Copyright

  for Irma and Warren

  The Plaza, the Camera, and the Century

  This photographic tribute to The Plaza was assembled at the close of the twentieth century. While it is most certainly a history of this renowned hotel, it is also a book about that century—albeit seen from a rather precise vantage point: 53,726 square feet of land situated on an island off North America. This plot of land is like no other in the world; indeed, it’s hard to imagine many other places that have witnessed the last hundred years quite the way it has.

  Early on, the land had an unremarkable history. Farmland originally, most of it was covered by a large pond used as an ice-skating rink in the winter. In 1890, an eight-story hotel, The Plaza, was erected there, which, with typical New York impatience, was declared outmoded after a mere fifteen years and demolished. In its place rose today’s Plaza, whose doors opened October 1, 1907. Designed as a lavish pleasure palace, it has managed to maintain an aura of luxury and civility throughout the tumult of the century.

  From the start, it has been a mirror of the New York scene. The city’s changing tastes in design, restaurants, parties, and accommodations are reflected here, as well as its adjustments to servant shortages, Prohibition, the Great Depression, two world wars, the Cold War, women’s rights, smokers’ rights, animal rights, and even British rock and roll. The first guests to sign the register, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, set the standard for the kind of people who would frequent it, luminaries who would reflect the changing definition of celebrity over the century—from Mark Twain and Diamond Jim Brady to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Beatles. (Ironically, one of the hotel’s best-known residents, a mischievous six-year-old named Eloise, is entirely fictitious.) Over the years, the hotel’s renown has grown to such an extent that The Plaza has become a symbol of elegance and refinement in American culture, inspiring writers from Neil Simon to Don DeLillo, artists from Everett Shinn to Red Grooms, and filmmakers from Alfred Hitchcock to Mike Nichols. Formal recognition of its cultural status came when it was designated a New York City landmark in 1969 and a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

  * * *

  The photographic process was introduced in 1839. Technology advanced slowly in those days, and it wasn’t until the turn of the century that photography began to evolve more rapidly. In a way, then, the camera and The Plaza grew up together. Almost all of the photographs presented in this book were taken on-site, and aside from their documentary information, they also reflect what was considered suitable photographic material over the last hundred years. The earliest surviving pictures of the hotel rarely depict people: Apparently, it was not considered proper to be photographed in hotels, and, more significantly, the explosive flash powder used for lighting didn’t inspire many willing subjects. By the century’s end, however, most of the extant pictures depict only people, now quite eager to be portrayed against the backdrop of The Plaza. They would be pictured here for a variety of reasons as several new kinds of photographs—the publicity still, the paparazzi photograph, the photo op—made themselves known.

  This picture collection also dispels the long-held myth that The Plaza has always been a sacrosanct temple of Beaux-Arts architecture. Although its exterior has changed little since 1907, the interior has undergone many alterations in order to remain fashionable and contemporary. Thus some very different (and unexpected) design trends can be seen here: German Renaissance architecture (in the Oak Room), sleek Art Deco (Joseph Urban’s Persian Room), postwar modernism (Henry Dreyfuss’s remodeled Persian Room), faux Polynesian village (Trader Vic’s), and even a Frank Lloyd Wright–furnished one-bedroom apartment (Suite 223-225).

  Showcasing a variety of changing tastes in design, The Plaza has also served
as a laboratory for evolving restaurant styles. There have been sixteen different on-premise dining rooms since 1907, each conceived to suit the palates of a specific decade: In the teens and twenties, the Grill Room served as the headquarters of the Lost Generation; in the thirties, the Persian Room lured café society types; in the forties, the Rendez-vous drew postwar cosmopolites. The fifties saw the birth of the Edwardian Room, a look back to the hotel’s earlier days, echoing more conservative times, while the sixties welcomed Trader Vic’s (one of the first theme eateries in the city) and the Oyster Bar, a nod to less formal dining. In the seventies, there was the Green Tulip, a reaction to the youthquake rocking the country, and 1994 saw the arrival of Gauguin, a restaurant-cum-discotheque that reflected the excesses of the heady eighties. The Edwardian Room lies unoccupied at the time of this writing; one can only wonder what kind of millennial statement it will make.

  America’s changing tastes in what constitutes a celebrity can be seen at The Plaza, as well. On opening day, captains of industry (George Jay Gould, John “Bet a Million” Gates) and men of accomplishment (Mark Twain, Enrico Caruso) were the anointed ones. By mid-century, film stars (Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe) and musicians (the Beatles) had usurped the place of inventors and artists as the country’s idols, and as the millennium approached, supermodels, hairstylists, chefs, and florists had joined the celebrity firmament. And it seems as if all of them have visited the hotel, to dine, be married, spend the night, attend a charity event, or be honored at a testimonial dinner. There might be six degrees of separation in the rest of the world, but at The Plaza, there’s but one.

  The pictures in this book are arranged chronologically and recount an episodic, anecdotal history of this great hotel. Thanks to a number of serendipitous events—a prime location, visionary builders and management, and, most recently, the movies—The Plaza has become the most famous hotel in the world. That it has maintained its dignity and reputation over the century is the most remarkable thing about it.

  Part One

  The Site

  The New York Skating Club

  On what would become one of New York’s most fabled—and expensive—plots of land, ice-skaters once innocently frolicked. These are the earliest known photographs of The Plaza’s future site, made when the land was occupied by the Fifth Avenue Pond, one of many on the undeveloped East Side of town. During the winter, this pond was reserved by the New York Skating Club for use as a private skating rink. (Here, its clubhouse around 1863; here, the enlarged facilities around 1870.)

  Ice-skating had come into vogue after the first public rink was opened in Central Park in 1858. At first, skaters were segregated by sex, as was the custom for many public activities of that era, but by 1870, this rule had been relaxed, although the female skaters at right still seem to be hovering rather timidly around the perimeter. As the cost of skates was high—ranging from thirteen dollars a pair to as much as thirty dollars—the sport had been embraced by the upper and middle classes, who built private rinks for their exclusive enjoyment. (Poorer folk made do with homemade versions constructed of wood and skated in Central Park.) Organized in 1863, the New York Skating Club was 150 members strong and was considered the most elite venue in town.

  The view at right is to the north; on the other side of the roadway, now Fifty-ninth Street, lies Central Park. It all looks rather bucolic. There is no hint of what was to come, not an inkling of the wealth, the spectacle, the moments high and low that would unfold here. What would soon transpire on this modest-looking site would have surely confounded these unsuspecting skaters.

  The First Plaza Hotel

  The site did not remain a skating rink for long. Its view of Central Park and its Fifth Avenue address clearly made it one of the prime corners in the rapidly growing city, and in 1880, the land was purchased for $850,000 by a group of real estate speculators who planned to erect an apartment hotel. A loan was secured from the New York Life Insurance Company, and Carl Pfeiffer was hired as the architect and John C. Phyfe and James Campbell as the builders. Construction began in 1883, but it was doomed from the start: Phyfe and Campbell soon were over budget, and after five years of litigation, New York Life foreclosed on the half-finished building. Following more complicated financing and endless debate, the firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to refit the uncompleted structure into a luxury hotel.

  The Italian Renaissance result (here) was finally achieved at a cost of $3 million and opened on October 1, 1890. Eight stories tall, with four hundred rooms, it was considered very fine in its day. Indeed, the line of hansom cabs parked along the entrance suggests a bustling establishment. The asphalt-lined open plaza in front of the hotel (from which it took its name) had been cut out of the city’s street-grid plan for use as a carriage turnaround; there was an entrance to Central Park to the north, and it was thought that heavy traffic would necessitate such a space. As the photograph suggests, this traffic never materialized. It was not until 1916 that the area was relandscaped as a pedestrian mall, and in 1923, it was officially named Grand Army Plaza.

  Here, both sides of a souvenir trade card promoting the property, given out at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

  The Fifth Avenue Door, Circa 1895

  Although modest in comparison to the building that would follow it, the first Plaza was considered one of the city’s finest hotels. Moses King’s Handbook of New York City, a popular guide at the time, gushed over the hotel’s appointments: “A large part of the main floor is finished with choice marble mosaic pavements, silvered ceilings, enfoliated bronze columns, counters of Mexican onyx, woodwork of mahogany and fine paintings. Here are the reception rooms, with their Gobelin tapestries and the great lounging rooms, where ladies and gentlemen meet amid Persian rugs, dainty tables, rich easy chairs, costly paintings and other attractive features.” The hotel’s symbol was the lion, and the king of the jungle was imprinted on everything from the mosaic floors to the lace curtains.

  Here, a view of the Fifth Avenue door, showing the main entrance facing the fashionable avenue, taken around 1895. This eastern facade featured a glass-domed entryway, Art Nouveau lanterns, and many awnings and window shades; it would be a long time before the invention of air conditioning.

  Here, rare illustrations of the hotel’s interior from a promotional booklet.

  At The Plaza, 1898

  The shot of this elegant street scene was taken from the northeast corner of the hotel, looking out onto Fifth Avenue. Like the first Plaza, none of its neighbors would remain there for long. On the left, the two buildings between Fifty-ninth and Fifty-eighth streets are the Savoy Hotel and the Balkenhayn apartment house, on the site now occupied by the General Motors Building. The handsome structure to their right was known as Marble Row, and although constructed to resemble one large residence, it was, in fact, five separate town houses. The dormered mansion partially seen at far right was the home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, where Bergdorf Goodman stands today.

  Demolition of the First Plaza Hotel

  The next step in the property’s development came about at a luncheon in the St. Regis Hotel one afternoon in 1902. Present were the two key figures in the plan: Bernhard Beinecke, (below, left) a former meat wholesaler turned financier and Harry Black, (below, right) chairman of the U.S. Realty and Construction Company. U. S. Realty had just purchased the existing hotel for $3 million on the advice of Beinecke, the man who first envisioned a grander Plaza Hotel. Since the foundation of the existing building would not permit additional stories, Beinecke’s idea was to demolish it and start from scratch.

  The deal was complete after one final investor, the flamboyant John “Bet a Million” Gates, signed on. One of the richest men in the United States, Gates made his fortune by monopolizing virtually all of the patents on barbed wire; he had acquired his singular nickname due to his propensity to wager large sums of money on practically anything—most notoriously, on which raindrop on a windowpane would hit the sill first. His consi
derable financial resources, however, came with one stipulation—that Fred Sterry be hired as managing director of the new Plaza. Sterry, one of the most celebrated hoteliers in the country, had already been approached by Gates. “Build me my kind of hotel in New York,” Sterry told him, “and I will come.”

  Demolition began in 1905, and soon the first Plaza (here) was nothing more than a memory. (The neighboring Zander Institute, a Swedish exercise facility, held on until the 1920s.)

  February 5, 1906

  An architect was hired to plan the new hotel, an easy choice in the person of Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, a well-regarded designer of luxury apartments and hotels. Soon a steel skeleton began to rise behind a sign that announced:

  * * *

  A NEW HOTEL WILL BE ERECTED ON THIS SITE AND OPENED IN THE FALL OF 1907 UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF FRED STERRY OF THE ROYAL POINCIANA & THE BREAKERS, PALM BEACH, FLA & THE HOMESTEAD, HOT SPRINGS, VA.

  * * *

  That Fred Sterry was the sole principal involved who was mentioned specifically by name was not surprising, for his name was already very familiar to upscale travelers. His career began at the United States Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, and at the age of twenty-seven, he was named managing director of the fashionable Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. This was followed by similar positions at the Royal Poinciana and the Breakers in Palm Beach, where his renown helped put the rising winter resort on the map. Sterry’s exquisite taste and refined manners were the keys to his meteoric rise; his influence on every aspect of The Plaza cannot be overemphasized. (Here, his portrait.)

  Here, The Plaza begins its ascent. In addition to the feverish construction team (which would complete the building in a record twenty-seven months), equally feverish sign painters were also at work (here). Their completed handiwork can be seen on the following pages.