Plaza Hotel

Where it sits. The Plaza stands at 768 Fifth Avenue on Grand Army Plaza, the open square where Fifth Avenue meets Central Park South at 59th Street. Central Park begins directly across the road, the horse carriages line up beneath its windows, and Bergdorf Goodman faces it from the south. Two monuments share the plaza: Augustus Saint-Gaudens' gilded equestrian General Sherman of 1903 on the northern half, and Karl Bitter's Pulitzer Fountain of 1916, whose figure of Abundance was paid for by the newspaper publisher's bequest, on the southern half. The building's white glazed brick above a marble base reads as almost French against the darker towers around it.

The story behind it. The present hotel opened on 1 October 1907, replacing an earlier and shorter Plaza on the same corner. Henry Janeway Hardenbergh designed it in a French Renaissance château manner, with a deep mansard roof, dormers, balconies and corner turrets — the same architect who had built the Dakota twenty-three years earlier and who would go on to the Willard in Washington. It was among the first buildings in the city planned from the outset to hold both hotel guests and long-term residents, and it has never entirely stopped being a place people live. Ownership has passed through Conrad Hilton in 1943, Donald Trump between 1988 and 1995, the Fairmont group and, since 2018, Katara Hospitality. A conversion between 2005 and 2008 turned a large part of the building into private condominiums, leaving 282 hotel rooms. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1986.

Its place in the culture. Kay Thompson's Eloise, published in 1955 with Hilary Knight's drawings, invented a six-year-old who lives on the top floor and treats the hotel as her private territory; the books were successful enough that management hung Knight's portrait of her in the lobby, where it still is, and the hotel has run an Eloise-themed shop and tea ever since. Truman Capote held his Black and White Ball in the Grand Ballroom on 28 November 1966, an event so exhaustively reported that it is still cited as the model for the celebrity party. F. Scott Fitzgerald set the suffocating confrontation between Gatsby, Daisy and Tom in a suite here in The Great Gatsby. The Beatles stayed during their first American visit in February 1964, besieged by crowds on 58th Street.

On screen. The Plaza is among the most filmed hotels anywhere, and its two most famous appearances bracket the century. In Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill is seized in the Oak Bar after being mistaken for a man who does not exist, which sets the entire film in motion. In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) a child checks in with his father's credit card and a tape recorder; the lobby scenes were shot in the real lobby, and because the young star had to slide across the floor, the carpet was lifted, exposing original tilework bearing the hotel's monogram that had been hidden for decades. Management liked it and never put the carpet back. The director Chris Columbus has said that the then owner, Donald Trump, asked for an on-screen cameo as a condition of filming. The list continues through Barefoot in the Park (1967), Funny Girl (1968), Neil Simon's Plaza Suite (1971), The Way We Were (1973), Arthur (1981), Crocodile Dundee (1986), Scent of a Woman (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), It Could Happen to You (1994) and episodes of The Sopranos. When the hotel refused the producers of Big Business (1988), they built their own Plaza on a soundstage instead — a reminder that a hotel this recognisable is often reconstructed rather than rented.

What you can actually do. Non-residents can walk into the lobby and the Palm Court, the glass-roofed room at the centre of the ground floor where afternoon tea is served under a restored leaded-glass ceiling; it is expensive and requires a reservation, and there is a dress code. The Champagne Bar and the Rose Club occupy the old public rooms. In the basement, a food hall opened in 2010 offers a considerably cheaper way to see the interior. The retail arcade along the 58th Street side is open to all.

Getting there and timing. The N, R and W stop at Fifth Avenue–59th Street directly outside; the F is one block west at 57th Street. December brings decorations, window crowds and the highest rates of the year. Central Park's south-east corner, the zoo, Wollman Rink and the Pond are all within five minutes on foot.