Hidden Details of The Plaza Hotel, From Lobby to Penthouse | Architectural Digest

[Music] hello welcome to the Plaza The Plaza Hotel is one of those buildings that the second you see it just says New York the plaza has always been a place where people know it people want to go there it's the ultimate global calling card it really speaks to the history of wealth in New York the history of celebrity in New York it's also one of New York's most beautiful buildings and most recognizable you enter into what is known as the Fifth Avenue Lobby the Plaza Hotel opened in 1907 construction began in 1905 it actually replaced an earlier Plaza Hotel that opened in 1890 after the turn of the century this was the city's premier hotel district the plaza wanted to compete on that level the plaza is in a style we call French Renaissance the chateaus of the wall valley the crystal chandeliers the white and gold mirrors this is all high style but I like to call the Gatsby era a novel by the way which has scenes set in the Plaza Hotel when the plaza was renovated in the early 2000s a new hotel lobby was created originally 90% of those who checked into the plaza in 1907 were full-time residents and the original restaurant that was in this corner of the hotel was divided into two 1/2 which was at the corner facing 50th Street and Fifth Avenue was for the permanent residence and then there was a divider where transient hotel guests would eat after the 1929 Wall Street crash that space became a showroom for the Studebaker car company following prohibition the owners of the hotel transformed the space again into the Swank Persian room this was a nightclub where many famous acts performed including Eartha Kitt and maybe most famously Hildegard who is a 1940's chanteuse another regular performer at the Persian room was Thompson when she was performing at the Persian room she used to always do this little girl voice one of her friends who was an editor at Harpers said you've got to do this as a balk and eventually it was the start of what would become the literary fictional heroine Eloise who lived at the Plaza if you walk through the hotel lobby you can see the check-in desk on your left and on the right are the elevator banks that take you up to your Suites while we're here let's grab a room key so we're walking back through the Fifth Avenue Lobby and we're going to take a left which leads to the famous common Court but we're going to wait to visit the Palm Court instead we're going to go round to the South Corridor as we walk through the corridor we enter into the section of the hotel known as The Shops a largely new area of the plaza since its renovation the area where there's now boutiques used to be an entrance that was created as part of the 1921 extension and during Prohibition people would often use the hotel suites to partake of alcohol and the entrance on 50th Street was a favorite discrete entrance into the hotel here become to its planted staircase the ceilings of the landings are particularly notable the work of John Smeralda from Palermo one of surprisingly many Sicilians who contributed to the design culture of New York City we're going up two flights to the Grand Ballroom which is perhaps best associated with the plaza and weddings some of the famous ones include Donald Trump to his second wife Marla maples also Eddie Murphy it was very well liked by the plaza staff since he gave hundred dollar tips following his wedding ballrooms are extremely important big hotels they generate revenue they make the hotel into something important to the city that the hotel is in now the Arctic's were Schultz and Weaver not Henry J Hardenberg whose original plaza hotel ballroom is long gone not Warren and Wetmore who indeed in 1921 designed a new Grand Ballroom after that ballroom opened it was replaced by this new ballroom designed by Schultz and Weaver the decorative ceilings by small Dee's some of them may remind you of work that he did elsewhere his work adorns many important American buildings the LA Biltmore Hotel he decorated the Blue Room the White House in Washington DC someone who felt the plaza ballroom to be a really wonderful space was the novelist Truman Capote who in November of 1966 held his famous black and white ball one of the most eclectic guest lists in New York history from Frank Sinatra - Andy Warhol - Norman Mailer Robert and Ethel Kennedy Vivian Lee now if we go back down the stair that we came up we come to a lovely foyer and with the painted ceilings directly below the Grand Ballroom we enter into the terrace room when it opened in 1921 this was a restaurant bad time to open a restaurant with prohibition the restaurant failed and this became what it has been since a function room if you are very rich you can have your wedding ceremony in the terrace room in your wedding reception upstairs in the grand ballroom the chandeliers aren't original they were added to the space at the behest of the hotel's publicity manager Serge a blintz key who is one of that great New York characters of his day who ordered these chandeliers to be made based on chandeliers and Versailles back in the day you could freely smoke and the cigarette smoke turned that ceiling into a muddy brow and it was all beautifully restored and the terrace rooms brought back to life in fact as we see it today it looks better than it has looked since the 1920s now rather than go back down by the stairs let's take the elevator so here we are in the shops again and we're passing quickly through up into the South Corridor in this corridor you will find painting of a young girl Eloise the Eloise portrait is by Hilary Knight who created the original drawings in the famous books and it's actually the second portrait to hang there since the first one mysteriously disappeared in the 1960s and no one ever found out exactly what became of it the plaza host did something called college night and the painting went missing it seemed one of the great art theft mysteries of all time in the 1970s when New York was in financial straits and so was the Plaza Hotel Kay Thompson was actually evicted from the hotel and she demanded that the painting come down or any reference to Eloise be removed from the hotel the plaque that said it was Eloise was removed although everyone knows exactly who that character is we're turning now into the Palm Court and above it Rises the building's light Court when the air conditioning equipment was installed in the 1940s at a time when the owner of the plaza was Conrad Hilton it led to the destruction of the stained glass skylight owners of the plaza hired a firm of stained glass restorers of course it's not natural light anymore fiber optic lighting systems make it possible to shine artificial light through that stained glass there are a lot of people my mother from Chicago is one of them who just feel it one of the quintessential New York experiences is tea at the Palm Court one of my favorite stories involves one of the great actresses of the early 20th century mrs. Patrick Campbell one of Shaw's favorites she was the original Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and she's seated at a table in the palm court pulls out a cigarette and lights it but wasn't considered quite proper for ladies to smoke in public yet the plaza don't wanna go in business alienating celebrities what they did was they got folding screens so that other diners would not have to see her smoke we are going to go up to the 20th floor and we're going to see a suite now these elevators are new elevators but they are replicas of the elevators in the original registration lobby on 59th Street which is now the lobby of the plazas private residences and thus a space which is now off-limits to the general public the rooms are not original rooms they are traditional and feeling with traditional moldings mantel pieces and so on this is the 2000 square-foot grand penthouse Terrace suite a long 58th Street there are 282 hotel rooms and suites and along Central Park there are more than 150 residences because of the plazas multiple renovations new two floors are the same and the rooms vary in size there is a long history of fabulous people living and staying at the hotel Clarabelle Walsh who supposedly moved in the hotel when it first opened although I think it's more like 1922 she is credited with inventing the cocktail party eventually she died in her Plaza suite in 1957 another famous resident is princess Vilma wofe palagi she moved into the hotel in 1909 she brought two young wolves and ibis a falcon several owls and eventually she bought a pet lion that she let live in her closet bathtub this is one of the plaza suites that has an outdoor terrace walked the railing and taken the view of neighboring rooftops John betta million gates helped finance the plaza back in 1907 and lived in an enormous suite and since he was an investor he was able to design his own bathtub and he made a huge pink bathtub he was very large and he liked to take baths at least twice a day before the hotel's most recent renovation there were over 200 hotel rooms that were not being used many of them were in a state of disrepair the average room size used to be around 350 square feet now the average room is 500 square feet with rooms ranging in sizes from one bedrooms two master suites now take the elevator down to the fifth floor rooms on the lower floors used to be the most expensive and glamorous when the hotel opened elevators were a relatively new technology and guests were weary of staying in rooms more than a few stories above ground level from the fifth floor we can access the building's light court this space used to look down on the lay light of the Palm Court before the lay light was covered over in 1944 buildings are designed around these light courts for the obvious reason of getting right in air and all the rooms of the building but the court itself puts a space at your disposal that's why when so many older buildings were retrofitted beginning in the 1940s for central air conditioning the big air conditioning unit was typically placed in these buildings like courts by because that was where there was room now deck is built above that and this really splendid small Park with fountains and sculptures back into the elevator and we're going to go back to the first floor runs long east side at the Palm Court and you see straight ahead a double door through the double doors we enter into a marvelous room this is the Edwardian room it has been reimagined countless times another one of the designated landmark rooms of the plaza of which there are eight the decorators of this room were a firm called William bound Garten and company quite famous in their day this room is clearly based on the banqueting-hall in Haddon Hall fourteenth century house and Derbyshire in England these lighting fixtures are produced by the Sterling bronze company who've also made the chandeliers over the ramps that lead from the upper to the lower levels of Grand Central Terminal what I think is especially effective about this ceiling is the way there are panels inserted that are mirrors they reflect the space back it makes the space seem even more ample than it is you see out one window Central Park and then out window right next to it Fifth Avenue a panoramic view like no other in New York this is the corner of the plaza where traditionally the most expensive rooms were located up above one such resident of a northeastern corner room third floor was Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1950s Wright lived much of the time in the plaza this is where he got to know Solomon Robert Guggenheim who lived in the plaza himself and of course Wright was commissioned by Solomon to design the Guggenheim Museum we're leaving the Edwardian room all the three corridors round the Palm Court are among the designated landmark interiors walls are of a beautiful marble called breccia you might wanna rap on it with your knuckles this wall is solid marble nowadays when architects slot marble you slice the stone to the thinness of deli roast beef not so with these walls here we are peering into the lobby of the private residences the private residence lobby is strictly off-limits to everyone except for full-time residents and there guests this was originally the hotel lobby it has that beautiful marble mosaic floor a movie called home alone 2 was made in the plaza young actor named Macaulay Culkin slides across the floor of this Lobby back in the day be always checked in on 59th Street that long marble counter was the check-in counter in October 1907 that's the counter that was used by the first registered guests alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt that is also where in February 1964 John Paul George and Ringo all signed the guest register on their first ever visit to New York City when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show going to continue through this North corridor we're gonna go down the hall now and head into the oak bar originally between two opposing columns was an enormous wooden bar for which the oak bar was later named during Prohibition the bar was removed Conrad Hilton reopened the oak bar in the Oak Room and he outfitted the room with three murals by Everett chin an American realist painter and a member of the ashcan school the works depict early scenes from the hotel including the old Vanderbilt mansion that used to be next door you can see right away the stylistic similarities between this house which was built in the 1880s and 90s and the Plaza Hotel Shin was one of the group of painters known as the eight who redefined American realism really urban realism yet these are very romantic pictures of old New York this is the Oak Room and it is much older than the oak bar this is a 1907 room it was designed by Henry J Hardenberg the original architect of the Plaza Hotel together with the decorating from a loved one and company there's a wonderful chandelier which features Stein hoisting Maiden one of the builders of the plaza was barren hard by NECA he was a German immigrant this room was his room at the Plaza its inspiration the great dining salons on the German transatlantic liners which were the most prestigious ocean liners of the day ships like kaiser wilhelm ii and there are these mural paintings of mythical Rhineland castles there's a story they like to tell the plaza that Walt Disney was impressed by those paintings and they inspired Cinderella's castle I've actually tried to verify that story and have been unable to one of the secrets of this room is that it's oak only down below higher up the architect switch to a synthetic resin the Oak Room was one of the last all-male restaurants in New York City until 1969 when betty Friedan a famous feminist staged to sit in and after a few months the plaza announced that they were going to let women in for the lunch hour we are exiting the building through the Fifth Avenue entrance that 5th Avenue entrance is very famous and it's well to note that it actually wasn't part of the original hotel in 1907 it was added in 1921 by the firm of Warren and Wetmore the architects of Grand Central Terminal the entrance on Fifth Avenue used to be what was called the champagne porch when the Pulitzer fountain opened on Grand Army Plaza people would sit in the champagne porch and look over at the beautiful fountain and sip their cocktails in 1964 when the Beatles made their first stateside visit crowds packed into Grand Army Plaza and it was completely filled with screaming teenagers mostly girls according to Greg Salamone who lived at the hotel John Lennon would Don a ski mask and actually go down and sort of wander incognito among the crowds the Pulitzer fountain the defining feature of Grand Army Plaza post dates the Plaza Hotel and the fountain wasn't completed until 1916 one of the stories that's famous about f scott Fitzgerald but is likely apocryphal one day he was possibly inebriated and he jumped fully dressed into the pulitzer fountain that kitty-corner from the Plaza Hotel is the sherry-netherland hotel its architects Schultz and Weaver were famous for their hotels his another hotel just two blocks up Fifth Avenue the Pierre which the same firm design and then of course there is Central Park which predates the Plaza Hotel by many years Central Park was built principally in the 1860s the hotel of course takes great advantage of Central Park many of its rooms were park facing those rooms are now condominium apartments Henry Janeway Hardenberg the architect designed the plaza to be a French chateau with skyscraper proportions it's in the shape of a classical column the first three stories are made of marble and they form the columns base the middle is made of terracotta brick and then the roof is made from copper and slate and it forms the columns capital and the green color reflects nicely the greenery of Central Park the plaza has been around for 111 years it's seen everything from assuring in the trend toward apartment living to Eloise in the 1950s to today when you have a combination of condominium and hotel it really has always reflected the city around it Plaza Hotel is architectural II an icon of New York it really stands for Grand Hotel in the same way that the Connaught is in London or the Creon in Paris for New Yorkers it's much homier than that a place that contains memories of weddings of debutante balls going to tea with your mom at the Palm Court that everybody in New York has some memory of and among the grand hotels of New York the plaza really stands supreme you [Music]

Channel: Architectural Digest

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Id: nrhZVMb6yVk

Length: 21min 37sec (1297 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018