The Plaza Hotel (also known as The Plaza) is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is located on the western side of Grand Army Plaza, after which it is named, just west of Fifth Avenue, and is between 58th Street and Central Park South ( 59th Street), at the southeastern corner of Central Park. Its primary address is 768 Fifth Avenue, though the residential entrance is One Central Park South. Since 2018, the hotel has been owned by the Qatari firm Katara Hospitality.
The 18-story, French Renaissance-inspired château style building was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. The facade is made of marble at the base, with white brick covering the upper stories, and is topped by a mansard roof. The ground floor contains the two primary lobbies, as well as a corridor connecting the large ground-floor restaurant spaces, including the Oak Room, the Oak Bar, the Edwardian Room, the Palm Court, and the Terrace Room. The upper stories contain the ballroom and a variety of residential condominiums, condo-hotel suites, and short-term hotel suites. At its peak, the Plaza Hotel had over 800 rooms. Following a renovation in 2008, the building has had 282 hotel rooms and 181 condos.
A hotel of the same name was built from 1883 to 1890. 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. Subsequently, it was sold to several owners during the remainder of the 20th century, including Conrad Hilton, A.M. Sonnabend, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Donald Trump, and a partnership of City Developments Limited and Al-Waleed bin Talal. The Plaza Hotel was renovated again after El Ad Properties purchased it in 2005, and the hotel was subsequently sold to Sahara India Pariwar in 2012 and then to Katara Hospitality in 2018. The hotel has been managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts since 2005.
Since its inception, the Plaza Hotel has become an icon of New York City, with numerous wealthy and famous guests. The restaurant spaces and ballrooms have hosted events such as balls, benefits, weddings, and press conferences. The hotel's design, as well as its location near Central Park, has generally received acclaim. In addition, the Plaza Hotel has appeared in numerous books and films. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the hotel's exterior and some of its interior spaces as city landmarks, and the building is also a National Historic Landmark. The hotel is also a member of Historic Hotels of America.
Site
The Plaza Hotel is at 768 Fifth Avenue and One Central Park South in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It faces Central Park South (59th Street) and the Pond and Hallett Nature Sanctuary in Central Park to the north; Grand Army Plaza to the east; and 58th Street to the south. Fifth Avenue itself is across Grand Army Plaza from the hotel. The hotel's site covers . It measures along 58th Street and along Central Park South, with a depth of between the two streets. As completed in 1907, it measured along 58th Street and along Central Park South, with an "L" running the entire 200-foot depth of the lot along Grand Army Plaza.
The hotel is near the General Motors Building to the east; the Park Lane Hotel to the west; and the Solow Building, Paris Theater, and Bergdorf Goodman Building to the south. The hotel's main entrance faces the Pulitzer Fountain in the southern portion of Grand Army Plaza. An entrance to the Fifth Avenue–59th Street station of the New York City Subway's is within the base of the hotel at Central Park South.
Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and Central Park South was relatively undeveloped throughout the late 19th century, when brownstone rowhouses were built on the avenue. By the early 1900s, that section of Fifth Avenue was becoming commercialized. The first decade of the 20th century saw the construction of hotels, stores, and clubs such as the St. Regis New York, the University Club of New York, and the Gotham Hotel. The corner of Fifth Avenue, Central Park South, and 59th Street was developed with the Plaza, Savoy, and New Netherland hotels during the 1890s; the Savoy would be replaced in 1927 by the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, which itself would be demolished in 1964. All three hotels contributed to Fifth Avenue's importance as an upscale area.
Architecture The Plaza Hotel, a French Renaissance-inspired château-style building, is tall, with 18 stories. The hotel's floors are numbered according to European usage, where floor 1, corresponding to the second story, is directly above the ground floor. The building was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in 1907, with a later addition, by Warren and Wetmore, being built from 1919 to 1922. The interiors of the main public spaces were primarily designed by Hardenbergh, Warren and Wetmore, and Schultze & Weaver. The other interior spaces were by Annabelle Selldorf and date largely to a renovation in 2008. Numerous contractors were involved in the construction of the hotel, including the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company and brick contractor Pfotenhauer & Nesbit.
Facade
The detail of the facade is concentrated on its two primary elevations, which face north toward Central Park and east toward Fifth Avenue. The facade's articulation consists of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and crown. The northern and eastern elevations are also split vertically into three portions, with the center portion being recessed. The northeastern and southeastern corners of the hotel contain rounded corners, which resemble turrets. There are numerous loggias, balustrades, columns, pilasters, balconies, and arches repeated across various parts of the facade. The 1921 annex contains a design that is largely similar to Hardenbergh's 1907 design.
Base The first and second stories of the facade, respectively corresponding to the ground floor and floor 1 of the interior, are clad with rusticated blocks of marble. The third story, corresponding to floor 2 of the interior, contains a smooth marble surface.; ; The hotel had two guest entrances in the 1907 design: the main entrance on Central Park South and a private entrance for long-term residents on 58th Street. The main entrance, in the center of the Central Park South facade, contains a porch above the three center bays, and large doorways. Since the hotel's 2008 renovation, the Central Park South entrance has served as the entrance to the building's condominiums.
The Grand Army Plaza side originally contained a terrace called the Champagne Porch. There were three minor entrances, including one to the porch. The Champagne Porch was replaced by a large central entry in 1921. The entrance there consists of six Tuscan-style columns, supporting a balcony on the second story, immediately above ground level. The second and third stories at the center of the Grand Army Plaza facade contains paired Corinthian-style pilasters supporting an entablature.
Upper stories The fourth through fifteenth stories, respectively corresponding to interior floors 3 through 14, are clad with white brick and typically contain rectangular windows.; ; These stories contain terracotta veneers that harmonize with the marble facade below it and the mansard roof above. At the center of the Central Park South facade, the five center bays at the twelfth and thirteenth stories (floors 11 and 12) contain an arcade composed of arches with paired pilasters. On the Grand Army Plaza side, there are horizontal band courses above the thirteenth story. The 58th Street facade is a scaled-down version of the two primary elevations on Central Park South and Grand Army Plaza. A marble balcony runs above the thirteenth story on all sides.
The top three floors are within a green Ludowici-tiled mansard roof with copper trim.; ; The Grand Army Plaza side contains a gable, while the 58th Street and Central Park South sides have three stories of dormer windows. The turrets on the northeastern and southeastern corners are topped by domed roofs, which are painted green to match the color of the trees in Central Park. A penthouse occupies the top three stories, which are labeled as floors 19–21.
Mechanical features
The 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. The hotel also originally had 10 passenger elevators, 13 dumbwaiters, and three sidewalk elevators. These elevators included four at the Central Park South lobby, three at the 58th Street lobby, and two near Central Park South, for long-term residents. The hotel's water storage tanks had a capacity of , and the hotel could filter of water from the New York City water supply system each day. Water was passed through ten filters before it was pumped to rooms, and water for the kitchens and for drinking fountains passed through additional filters.
The mechanical plant in the subbasement originally contained nine boilers; a coal plant with a capacity of ; fourteen ventilating fans; and an electric generating plant with a capacity of . Also in the subbasement was a refrigerating plant that could make of ice every 24 hours, as well as a switchboard made of Tennessee marble, which controlled the hotel's power and lighting.
Interior The hotel has a steel frame superstructure with hollow tile floors, as well as wired-glass enclosures around all stairways and elevators. Originally, five marble staircases led from the ground floor to all of the other floors. As constructed, the stories above the ground floor surrounded a large courtyard, which was covered over with office space in a 1940s renovation. Hardenbergh, in designing the Central Park South foyer, had believed the lobby to be the most important space in the hotel, as did Warren and Wetmore when they designed the Fifth Avenue lobby. Furthermore, Warren and Wetmore had thought restaurants to be the second most significant space in a hotel, in designing the Terrace Room.
There were originally laundry rooms in the basement and on floor 18. When the hotel opened in 1907, the basement also contained a grill room, kitchen, various refrigeration rooms, and amenities such as a Victorian-style Turkish bath and a barber shop. Originally concealed within the mansard roof were the housekeepers' quarters and maids' dormitories; the eighteenth floor had carpentry, ironing, and tailors' departments.Hotel Monthly 15, no. 176 (November 1907), cited in The spaces on floor 18 had become offices by the late 20th century.
Hallways and lobbies
In Hardenbergh's original design, a main corridor connects the primary spaces on the ground floor. The corridor, which still exists, connects the lobbies on 58th Street, Grand Army Plaza, and Central Park South. The layout of the ground-floor hallways dates largely from the 1921 expansion by Warren and Wetmore. The corridor wraps around the south, east, and north sides of the Palm Court, which is in the center of the ground floor. Various smaller corridors lead off the main corridor. All of the halls have floors decorated with mosaics, coffered ceilings made of plaster, and marble columns and pilasters with bronze capitals.