40 Facts About Plaza Hotel

Plaza Hotel is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

The original hotel was replaced by the current structure from 1905 to 1907; Warren and Wetmore designed an expansion to the Plaza Hotel that was added from 1919 to 1921, and several major renovations were conducted through the rest of the 20th century.

The Plaza Operating Company, which erected the current building, operated the hotel until 1943.

The Plaza Hotel was renovated again after El Ad Properties purchased it in 2005, and the hotel was sold to Sahara India Pariwar in 2012 and then to Katara Hospitality in 2018.

Since its inception, the Plaza Hotel has become an icon of New York City, with numerous wealthy and famous guests.

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Plaza Hotel is at 768 Fifth Avenue and One Central Park South in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City.

Plaza Hotel is near the General Motors Building to the east, the Park Lane Plaza Hotel to the west, and the Solow Building and the Bergdorf Goodman Building to the south.

The second and third stories at the center of the Grand Army Plaza Hotel facade contains paired Corinthian-style pilasters supporting an entablature.

The Grand Army Plaza Hotel side contains a gable, while the 58th Street and Central Park South sides have dormer windows on the sixteenth through nineteenth stories, corresponding to interior floors 15 through 18.

Plaza Hotel originally contained three sets of pneumatic tube mail systems: one for guest mail, another for guests to order food from the kitchen, and a third for the hotel's various operating departments.

Plaza Hotel has a steel frame superstructure with hollow tile floors, as well as wired-glass enclosures around all stairways and elevators.

The Fifth Avenue lobby was decorated with bas-reliefs; and it preserved some of the original decorations from the Plaza Hotel Restaurant, including paneled pilasters and a beamed ceiling.

The room had an entrance at Grand Army Plaza Hotel, which was closed with the creation of the Fifth Avenue lobby.

Land lots making up the site of the present-day Plaza Hotel were first parceled and sold by the government of New York City in 1853, and acquired by John Anderson from 1870 to 1881.

Plaza Hotel's design took advantage of the fact that the site faced Grand Army Plaza and could thus be seen from many angles.

Much of the furniture was manufactured by the Pooley Company of Philadelphia; where the Pooley Company could not manufacture the furnishings, the Plaza Hotel's developers chartered ships to import material from Europe.

The Champagne Porch along Grand Army Plaza was the most exclusive area of the hotel, with meals costing between $50 and $500.

Plaza Hotel filed plans for a 19-story annex along 58th Street in August 1919, to be designed by Warren and Wetmore.

The Plaza had become the city's most valuable hotel by 1923, and contributed to the parent U S Realty Company being highly profitable and paying increasingly high dividends during the 1920s.

At the time, the Plaza Hotel was 61 percent occupied, and many public areas were closed due to supply shortages caused by World War II.

Plaza Hotel experienced financial difficulties during the early 1960s; but under Sonnabend's management, the Plaza's financial outlook improved by 1964.

The Plaza Hotel was highly profitable in the late 1990s, with operating income of almost $46 million at the end of that decade.

Correspondingly, the Plaza Hotel's operating profits decreased greatly, leaving Kwek and Al-Waleed unable to refurbish the Plaza Hotel as they had previously planned to do.

The Plaza Hotel's furnishings were auctioned on-site and at a Christie's auction in 2006.

In July 2018, Katara Hospitality acquired full ownership of the Plaza Hotel after buying Sahara's and Askenazy and Kingdom's stakes.

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The Plaza Hotel officially reopened in May 2021; public spaces such as the Palm Court were rearranged to allow for social distancing.

The hotel's appeal to the wealthy came from the fact that, in the early 20th century, apartments at the Plaza were generally cheaper than in more upscale apartment buildings, and that it faced Central Park, which at the time was well patronized by the wealthy.

Later in the 20th century, the Plaza Hotel served as home to "wealthy widows", such as performer Kay Thompson, who wrote the Eloise children's book series about a young girl who lived at the hotel.

Plaza Hotel became associated with celebrities and the wealthy upon its opening, surpassing the original Waldorf Astoria in that respect.

Plaza Hotel has been popular among world leaders, particularly presidents of the United States.

For other world leaders, the Plaza Hotel kept a set of national flags, so that an appropriate one could be displayed whenever a foreign head of state visited.

Plaza Hotel has hosted diplomatic events, as in September 1985, when the finance ministers of several countries signed the Plaza Accord, by which the U S dollar was depreciated in relation to other currencies.

Paul Goldberger, writing for The New York Times in 1982, stated that the Plaza Hotel had become an important part of the city's architectural history, similar to the Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library Main Branch.

Ada Louise Huxtable wrote for The New York Times in 1971 that the Plaza Hotel was the city's "most celebrated symbol of cosmopolitan and turn-of-the-century splendor", speaking negatively only of the short-lived Green Tulip restaurant.

The rebuilt Plaza was described in a 1907 Architectural Record article as having a site that was "the most unobstructed and charming which could have been selected for a large metropolitan hotel", despite being smaller than that of competitors, such as the Waldorf Astoria.

The Plaza Hotel's exterior was designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1969.

Plaza Hotel has been used as a setting for several works of literature throughout its history.

The Plaza was featured in F Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.

Plaza Hotel is one of the most popular filming locations in New York City.

Plaza Hotel has refused or set unusual conditions for some productions wanting to film there.