The Plaza Hotel: A French Chateau Beside Central Park

By Solomon Rokowsky

The Plaza Hotel from Central Park South in 2016. Photograph by King of Hearts, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Plaza is the second hotel of that name on its site, at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. This one was built between 1905 and 1907, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission calls it the outstanding example of American hotel architecture of the first decade of the twentieth century. Eighteen stories of white brick and marble rise to steep slate roofs that the architect himself described as French Renaissance in style.

That architect was Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, a pioneer of luxury hotel and apartment house design who had also designed the Dakota on Central Park West. He took full account of the unusual site, explaining that he wanted the building to be viewed "in its entirety from many points of view and from considerable distances."

The site deserved the attention. The hotel's eastern face looks toward Fifth Avenue across Grand Army Plaza, with the Pulitzer Fountain at its center and Augustus Saint-Gaudens's equestrian statue of General Sherman at its end. The Landmarks Preservation Commission compares the whole design to a European square, one of the few of that quality in New York.

Grand Army Plaza and the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the hotel, 2018. Photograph by Tdorante10, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The hotel and Grand Army Plaza in 1910. Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. Public domain.

The doors opened on October 1, 1907, and a large, orderly crowd stood opposite the main entrance on Central Park South to watch the fashionable guests arrive, the Commission recounts. The hotel grew quickly. In 1921 the broad terrace along Fifth Avenue was removed to make way for the present entrance, and three hundred more rooms were added along 58th Street.

For sixty years, the Commission wrote, the Plaza played a part in the social life of New York "always maintaining its dignity yet reflecting the changes in the manners and customs of the Twentieth Century." Its guests ranged from F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who pranced in the fountain, to Eloise, the fictional six-year-old of Kay Thompson's books, who absolutely loved the Plaza, as The New York Times put it. On October 7, 1964, a second crowd, this one of howling teenagers, gathered to welcome the Beatles. Frank Lloyd Wright, the apostle of a generation of architectural rebels, always chose the hotel for his visits to New York.

Pomona, the statue atop the Pulitzer Fountain, with the Plaza behind it, 2008. Photograph by Jim Henderson. Public domain.

The register of owners reads like a century of New York real estate. Donald Trump bought the hotel in 1988, then had to give it up to a group of investors including the Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal as part of a bankruptcy proceeding, Reuters recounts. In 2004 the owners sold the hotel for $675 million to Elad Properties, a record per-room price for a New York hotel at the time, The New York Times reported. Elad converted much of the building to private condominiums, and after a full renovation the hotel reopened in 2008.

Who owns the Plaza Hotel today?

A company owned by the state of Qatar. Katara Hospitality, the hotel division of the Qatar Investment Authority, completed its purchase of the Plaza on July 2, 2018, as Bloomberg reported at the time; Reuters put the price at around $600 million, paid for full ownership including a 75 percent stake held by India's Sahara India Pariwar. It was Katara's first acquisition in the United States. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts continues to manage the hotel, while the condominiums created in the 2008 renovation are privately owned.

The city made the Plaza a landmark on December 9, 1969; the federal government followed, listing it on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and later naming it a National Historic Landmark. More than a century after Hardenbergh drew it, his chateau still closes the view up Fifth Avenue the way he intended, adding, in the Commission's words, "immeasurably to the beauty of the skyline of New York City."

The Plaza in 1907, the year it opened. Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. Public domain.

Sources

• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Plaza Hotel designation report (1969)
• The New York Times, "Eloise Gets a New Landlord: Plaza Sells for $675 Million" (2004)
• Bloomberg, "NYC’s Historic Plaza Hotel Is Sold to Qatari State-Owned Company" (2018)
• Reuters, "Qatar to buy New York’s Plaza Hotel for $600 million" (2018)
• Katara Hospitality, announcement of the Plaza acquisition (2018)
• Los Angeles Times, "NYC’s famed Plaza Hotel reopens" (2008)
• Wikimedia Commons, Plaza Hotel in snow by King of Hearts (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Wikimedia Commons, portrait of Henry J. Hardenbergh (public domain)
• Wikimedia Commons, Grand Army Plaza by Tdorante10 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Wikimedia Commons, Pomona statue by Jim Henderson (public domain)
• Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Co. photograph of the Plaza (1907)
• Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Co. photograph of the Plaza (1910)
• National Park Service, National Register nomination for the Plaza Hotel