At the Plaza Read online

The series of photos that follow depicting the building’s construction were commissioned by the U.S. Realty and Construction Company. Made (and scrupulously dated) on a weekly basis, they served as a record of the hotel’s progress. This was a common practice among builders at the time to protect their investments.

  September 15, 1906

  Architect Henry Hardenbergh’s blueprint for The Plaza begins to reveal itself in this photograph taken in mid-September 1906. In keeping with the high standards that informed every aspect of this project, Hardenbergh (here) was chosen because of his peerless reputation, first made in 1884, when his Dakota Apartments went up on Central Park West. His renown was sealed with his 1891 design for the original Waldorf-Astoria, then considered the most luxurious hotel in the world. Other notable Manhattan projects included the Art Students League and the Manhattan and Martinique hotels; he also designed the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.

  Yet this impressive body of work proved to be but a warm-up for The Plaza, universally considered Hardenbergh’s masterwork. Its spectacular site offered unobstructed views of two facades of the building (a rarity in New York), and he made the most of it with a deftly articulated design that effortlessly merged a French château with a skyscraper. His work so pleased the U.S. Realty and Construction Company that he was later hired to plan another of their projects, Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel, where he repeated a number of The Plaza’s design elements, including the back-to-back letters of its logo.

  October 7, 1906

  Though the hotel’s opening was still a year off, The Plaza’s facade was almost fully in place by October 1906 (here). Behind-the-scenes activities, meanwhile, continued at an equally rapid clip. Fred Sterry was dispatched to Europe on a massive buying trip, where he purchased Irish linen, French crystal, and Swiss lace curtains. “Building a house like this is much like making a woman’s dress,” he said in an interview. “Everything is specially made and specially suited for a purpose. I will venture to say there is not one stock thing in the decorations [for The Plaza]. Even the border on the mosaic floor was designed for this room, and that open circle in the bronze work was made for a clock, in turn made for that particular space, and so on with the carpets, furniture and tapestries. Quite different from the old style of opening an inn!” Quite different, indeed. Few inns boasted furniture from the Pooley Company of Philadelphia, china from L. Straus and Sons, and carpets from W. J. Sloan. Moreover, the cachet of outfitting The Plaza was not lost on its suppliers. The Pooley Company, for one, prominently featured the hotel’s name in its advertising (here).

  While the building had come a long way, so had the sign painters’ art, with bills for a trade show, a theater, cigarettes, soap, cordials, and catsup adorning the base of the building. This would not be the last time The Plaza would serve as a backdrop for advertising promotion.

  Part Two

  The Legend

  October 1, 1907

  The completed hotel cost $12.5 million, making it one of the most expensive buildings ever erected in the city, and this sum was $1 million over the original budget. The overrun came as a result of the owners’ last-minute decision to acquire several neighboring brownstones along Fifty-eighth Street, in the event of future expansion. (It was a prescient investment; expansion would come a mere fourteen years later.)

  There were few quibbles about the expense, however, given the stunning result, which was simplicity itself. For Hardenbergh’s design was based on a column—with a clearly marked base (three stories of rusticated marble), shaft (ten stories of white glazed brick), and capital (an elaborate mansard roof). Of course, a plethora of detail enlivened the design: The shaft was softened by rounded corner turrets ending in towers, while the roof was richly ornamented with dormers and gables, lightly topped with filigree to soften its silhouette against the sky, and made from green copper and slate to echo the trees across the street in Central Park. What made it all the more grand was its size, which dwarfed all of the buildings in the neighborhood (as seen here). Time would eventually reverse this situation.

  Here, an example of the overheated press coverage that accompanied the hotel’s opening.

  Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Signs the Opening-Day Register

  October 1, 1907, arrived with everything at the ready, and promptly at 9:00 A.M., a carriage pulled up, bearing The Plaza’s first guest. He was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, the thirty-year-old millionaire sportsman, and his arrival was hardly fortuitous. Rather, it had been carefully orchestrated in advance by Fred Sterry, who wanted to send a message to the world about what kind of place The Plaza aspired to be. Vanderbilt embodied it perfectly: He was young, dashing, well known, and a scion of one of America’s wealthiest families; indeed, his father owned one of the most famous dwellings in town, the sprawling mansion directly south of the hotel.

  Vanderbilt’s wife had been delayed by a minor automobile accident in Newport the day before (a telling detail, as most Americans had yet to experience the thrill of riding in a motorized vehicle), so he checked in alone, taking a five-room corner suite, 521–529, with a nearby room, 546, for his servant. Soon some of the smartest names in American society joined his on the register: Oliver Harriman, Col. William Jay, John Wanamaker, George Jay Gould, Cornelius K. G. Billings, Benjamin Duke, and two of the hotel’s financial backers, Bernhard Beinecke and John “Bet a Million” Gates. The presence of all this wealth signaled a new style of fashionable living, one in the English manner. Rather than maintain a city home and a country estate (and troublesome sets of servants for each), it was now socially acceptable to keep a country estate as one’s primary residence and lease a suite of apartments in a luxury hotel as one’s city address.

  Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt led the way, and remained at The Plaza until 1912, when he moved to quarters in his own eponymous hotel, which had just opened on Park Avenue. Sadly, he did not have long to live, perishing on board the Cunard liner Lusitania after its sinking by a German U-boat in 1915.

  Here, young Vanderbilt. Here, the first-day register.

  The Fifty-ninth Street Lobby

  It hasn’t changed much over the years; today the Fifty-ninth Street lobby looks much as it did when these pictures were taken in October 1907 by photographer Joseph Byron. Byron is remembered for his portraits of high society (among his subjects were Mark Twain, Lillian Russell, and Sarah Bernhardt, as well as various Astors, Vanderbilts, and Whitneys) but is best known for his interiors, photographs of everything from millionaires’ dining rooms to luxury liner lounges. He was thus the logical choice to capture The Plaza just before it opened—when it was perfection—and the splendid record he left behind (shown here and in a number of interiors immediately following) has been preserved in the archives of the Museum of the City of New York.

  This was originally the hotel’s sole lobby, for a vast dining room occupied what later became the Fifth Avenue entrance. Fifty-ninth Street was therefore The Plaza’s nerve center, and even though the hotel was a smaller place at the time (with five hundred rooms, compared with the present eight hundred), an additional door was employed to accommodate the traffic, the portal just right of the center in the photo here. After the expansion of the hotel in 1921 (when the Fifth Avenue side became a lobby), this center door was eventually sealed off, refashioned into a florist shop in the forties, then remade as the concierge desk in the seventies.

  Other modifications to this lobby over the years included the complete reworking of the ceiling, which was dropped to accommodate an apparatus for air conditioning, as well as the replacement of the rather primitive-looking original chandeliers with a single, more impressive model. The extravagant fixture hanging there today came courtesy of Donald and Ivana Trump, who installed it in 1989, following Trump’s purchase and renovation of the property.

  The Tearoom (the Palm Court)

  Although Henry Hardenbergh’s interior design for The Plaza was modeled after a private men’s club, its centerpiece, a tearoom, had a decidedly feminine cast. A reinter
pretation of the Winter Garden in London’s Carlton Hotel, this vast, airy space was bordered by fleur-de-pêche marble columns and mirrored doors, accented with a variety of palms, and crowned by a domed yellow-and-green skylight. The room pictured here was artfully arranged for Joseph Byron, who took this photograph just before the hotel’s opening. Here, the hallway bordering it.

  The builders informally referred to it as “the Lounge,” guests dubbed it “the Tearoom” (which stuck), and it was not until the mid-1930s that it was formally named the Palm Court. Of all the hotel’s public areas, it has been altered the most, its glass dome having been removed in 1944. This came about for a number of reasons. For one thing, the 1921 expansion of the hotel—the addition of a wing along the Fifty-eighth Street side—effectively blocked almost all of the natural light from the room, and over time the dome had fallen into bad repair and was in danger of raining debris into teacups. But more to the point, air conditioning was about to be installed, and the Palm Court’s central position in the building made it a prime candidate to house the apparatus. For this combination of reasons, then, the dome was removed and replaced with a vaguely baroque ceiling. Above it, central heating and cooling units were mounted, and in the leftover space, additional rooms for private functions were fashioned.

  Long a part of Plaza lore, the Palm Court has served as a setting for scenes in many popular novels and films (most notably, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby), and, as we shall see, was the setting for its first scandal.

  Mrs. Patrick Campbell Lights a Cigarette

  The Plaza had been open barely a month when scandal made an early appearance with the arrival of Mrs. Patrick Campbell on November 15, 1907. A star of the British stage, the unconventional Mrs. Campbell was known to her fans as “Mrs. Pat” and the “English Sarah Bernhardt”; she had also gained renown because of a great friendship with playwright George Bernard Shaw (who later wrote Pygmalion for her). Stopping at The Plaza for the first leg of an American tour, Mrs. Pat had come to perform in Hedda Gabler and several other plays. (Here, a carte de visite showing the actress in costume for the role.)

  She arrived with her dog, a monkey griffon named Pinkie Panky Poo, and immediately established a precedent: Management decided on the spot to admit animals to the hotel, a policy in place to this day. Once ensconced in her Plaza suite, Mrs. Pat allowed the press up for an interview, where she held forth on a variety of topics. Afterward, she decided to go downstairs for dinner.

  The consequences of this decision would be loudly debated in newspapers across the country in the days to follow. For Mrs. Pat, after ordering her dinner, reached into her bag, extracted a perfumed Egyptian cigarette, and lit it. She then proceeded to smoke it—in public. In an age when such a thing was unthought of, this provocative act did not go unchallenged: The headwaiter appeared instantly and insisted that the cigarette be put out. “My good man,” Mrs. Pat legendarily replied. “I understand this is a free country. I shall do nothing to change it.”

  A compromise of sorts was effected: A screen was brought so that the sight of her cigarette would not offend the other diners. Somehow, the press got wind of the story, and a great debate began over the evils of smoking (regardless of gender). Several years later, as part of this crusade, New York City banned smoking on its subways, a law said to have come about as a result of Mrs. Pat’s folly.

  Here, a 1940s news clipping recounting the scandal.

  The Men’s Cafe (the Edwardian Room)

  Located on the prime northeast corner of the property, the Men’s Cafe offered prized views of both Central Park and Fifth Avenue in a Spanish Renaissance setting, complete with a beamed ceiling, tile floors, wood paneling, and sturdy furniture. Exclusively a male domain, it was home to an early version of what was later called the “power breakfast,” although the typical menu—pig knuckles and mutton chops—and the players—Mark Twain and Diamond Jim Brady—have changed over the years. As none of the hotel’s restaurants had been given formal names, the room was offhandedly referred to as “the Cafe.”

  It did not remain a male domain for long. In 1920, following a shuffling of restaurant space brought about by Prohibition and an expansion of the property, the Cafe admitted ladies and became the hotel’s principal dining room. Still without a name, it was finally dubbed the Plaza Restaurant in the early forties, and remained so until 1955, when it was named the Edwardian Room in honor of the age that it personifies. In 1971, a disastrous experiment transformed it into a trendy boîte called the Green Tulip, featuring hanging plants and faux Tiffany lamps. This incarnation proved mercifully short-lived, and the room resumed its former name and atmosphere in 1974. It has been used as a space for private functions since 1998.

  The Men’s Bar (the Oak Room)

  Of all the public rooms in The Plaza, the Men’s Bar was said to be architect Henry Hardenbergh’s favorite. A German Renaissance tour de force, the oak-paneled room looks virtually the same today as it does in Joseph Byron’s 1907 photograph here. The only difference is the bar itself (running between the columns in the rear), which was removed in 1920 to comply with the new law of Prohibition. Otherwise, all of Hardenbergh’s design touches remain in this architectural ode to the pleasures of drinking: the frescoes of Bavarian castles, the faux wine casks carved into the woodwork, the coats of arms set into the moldings, and the grape-laden chandelier, topped by a barmaid hoisting a stein. (The tapestries currently hanging on the walls were added by Donald and Ivana Trump in 1989.)

  Originally a male sanctuary, it was informally dubbed “the Barroom” and, for a short period, boasted a burbling electric fountain as its centerpiece (here). For the duration of Prohibition, it was used for storage, then reopened as a dining room and officially named the Oak Room around 1934. Although ladies were then admitted for dinner, it remained a male domain at lunchtime until 1969.

  The Plaza Crest

  The back-to-back P’s that comprise The Plaza’s crest, embedded in everything from cornices to bath towels, have long intrigued the hotel’s guests, yet the origins of this symbol are somewhat hazy. It most certainly came from architect Henry Hardenbergh’s office, for the same design was used in the hotel he built in Boston, the Copley Plaza. (A common explanation for the “meaning” of The Plaza’s crest is that the double P’s symbolize the proximity of Central Park and Grand Army Plaza, but the Copley Plaza disproves this premise: It does not have a park and plaza side by side.)

  More likely is the theory suggested by architecture critic Paul Goldberger. Private men’s clubs were all the rage at the turn of the century, and they generally identified themselves with elaborate monograms fashioned from their initials. These monograms were displayed on flags hanging outside the clubs, which usually bore no other identifying sign.

  Since Hardenbergh built a hotel that conveyed the feeling of a private club—and never included a sign with the hotel’s name anywhere on the facade—he no doubt followed the custom of designing a monogram for it. Making a symmetrical design out of the top-heavy letter P was a challenge, but Hardenbergh followed the lead of French builders, who often placed letters backward in their designs. As he was creating a French Renaissance structure, this choice was particularly apt, and memorable.

  The Dining Room (the Fifth Avenue Lobby)

  Opposite the Tearoom lay The Plaza’s main Dining Room (site of the Fifth Avenue lobby today), one vast space that also included what was later known as the Rose Room. This dining room welcomed both sexes, although it was segregated into two sections, separated by movable glass partitions—one reserved for the hotel’s permanent guests, the other for transients and visitors. Considered most choice (and naturally held for permanent guests) was the south side of the room, which overlooked Fifty-eighth Street; apparently, the food was even more delicious when eaten while looking at the splendid Cornelius Vanderbilt mansion across the street.

  Here, the dining room, done in shades of rose, whose windows overlooked Fifth Avenue. This page, the opposite view, a
s seen from Fifth Avenue. Very early on, a seasonal outdoor restaurant named the Champagne Porch was fashioned in the narrow forty-by-fifteen-foot space between the columns and the building proper. With only ten tables, the Porch was the most exclusive dining experience in the hotel, patronized by the likes of Diamond Jim Brady and the Prince of Wales. Its prices were equally celestial, with champagne running from ten to fifteen dollars a bottle, and a complete dinner approaching the then-astronomical sum of fifty dollars.

  The Porch closed after the Volstead Act became law. The dining room itself was dismantled and converted into a lobby in 1921, concurrent with the addition of an annex to the building along the Fifty-eighth Street side.

  Luncheon Menu, July 4, 1911

  A menu for an Independence Day luncheon in the main dining room. It was also rendered on the reverse in French (not shown), as was the style of the time.

  The Ballroom

  Society first patronized hotel ballrooms for parties and benefits following the Civil War, and by the turn of the century, no hotel of any consequence was without one. By the time The Plaza opened in 1907, amateur theatricals and tableaux vivants had become popular amusements among the upper classes, and so ballroom stages were also de rigueur. The Plaza’s stage was a mechanical marvel, a forty-five-by-eight-foot structure manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company that could be transformed by the press of a button into a balcony when not in use. This stage would descend quite memorably on January 24, 1908, for a single performance of Mrs. Van Vechten’s Divorce Dance, a one-act play that was the social event of the season, as its star was Mrs. George Jay Gould—former showgirl turned society figure and Plaza resident. (Here, Mr. and Mrs. Gould pose in the bedroom of their suite.)