The Plaza Hotel

Plaza Hotel, New York City

Simbol of the Plaza on the floor in one of the elevators.

In my today´s post, I am going to talk about one of the most emblematic buildings in NYC. The Plaza Hotel.

At the same time I am going to talk about interesting things that happened inside the hotel.

The history.

View of the Hotel from Central Park.

The Plaza Hotel of NYC is a luxury hotel. It consist on 19 floors, with 120 meters of length and 76 meters high.

Located between the Grand Army Plaza (which gives the name to the hotel) and is the occidental face the one we can see from there, and it extends through the Central Park south street.

The Fifth avenue is located in the oriental face of the Grand Army Plaza.

A small chronology

⌚In 1943 Conrad Hilton bought the hotel, and invested 6 million dollars just for redecorating it.

⌚In 1955 The Childs Company acquired it and changed the name to the Hotel Corportaion of America.

⌚In 1988 Donal Trump bought it and he confessed that  he had bought more than just a building, it was more like a master piece for him, like the Mona Lisa.

⌚In 2004 he had to sell it after his divorce, and it was El Ad properties who bought it with intentions of adding commercial and residential sections to the hotel.

Curious facts.

✎It was designed by Henry J. Hardenberg and Thomas Hasting 

✎The Plaza is the second hotel who is named like that in the same place.

✎The building has a french-neorenaissance style. If you know about this you will think of a french castle when you look at the Plaza.

✎It was opened to the public in October 1st 1907.

✎In 1986 the hotel was designated as a National Historic Landmark. The Waldorf-Astoria is the only hotel designated as a National Historic Landmark too in NYC.

✎It closed his doors on April 25 in 2005, and it was opened again on March 1st,2008, offering 282 hotel rooms and 152 apartments.

✎ The Hotel appears as one of the main "characters" in Home Alone 2, Lost in New York.

Donald Trump was the owner of the Plaza by that time, and we can actually see him on the movie directing Kevin to the lobby.

 

Also one of the most memorable scenes is when Kevin eluded the hotel staff after they accused him of credit card fraud by sliding through the Plaza´s lobby into a waiting elevator.To make this scene possible, the film crew had to remove the wall-to-wall carpeting, exposing the original tiles.When Trump saw the beautiful mosaics, he instantly feel in love with it, and insisted it remain that way after the filming was concluded.

✎The hotel appears in other famours tv shows like:

  Friends

  Seinfield

  Sex and the City 

  Ugly betty

  Family Guy

✎The Beatles stayed in the hotel during their first visit to New York. 

Pictures

View of the Hotel in 1912

View of one of the hotel rooms.

Close detail of a wine glass in the Hotel.

The apartments

Today the Hotel offers 152 luxury apartments.

One of those can cost 5.8 million Dollars and it has only 2 bedrooms.Also the apartments are usually empty since the owners are important personalities who don´t spend much time on the same place. Others have other residential places which are bigger and where they prefer to stay longer time.

So we can say that living there is not too much fun.

Almost 100 apartments have been sold until now, but as I said only a few are used during the whole year.

If we remember , the hotel was almost booked through the whole year.

In this following video you can take a look at one of these apartment, in particular to the one that Tomy Hilfiger owns.

I´m a City Child I live at the Plaza.

"Hi, I am Eloise.  I am six.  I am a city child.  I live at the Plaza" 

Eloise is the main character of a series of books where a small girl of 6 years old, tell us how is her life living at the Plaza.

Two years after the first book was released, a portrait of Eloisse was hanged in the lobby.

Four years later it disappeared. When Princess Grace Kelly went to the hotel with his kids, they found terrible this lost and the displeasure was so big that the painter decided to make another one.

During some years the hotel had a room just for Eloise, and it was used as the waiting room for the visitors to the hotel.

Today inside the Plaza we can find a small tea room; a shop where we can find souveniers with Eloise pictures; another room where you can dress up like her etc...

In my opinion is incredible that a hotel like this has a big section dedicated to this character and only for the joy of the small ones.

Eloise shop inside the Hotel

A party on Eloise´s honor 

In the main entrance we can find an Eloise´s flag next to the American one.

Small tea room 

Eloise´s living room

This is the portrait that we can find now in the Hotel. The location I could not find it, but it´s different from the place where the first one was located.

I hope you enjoyed my post today!

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Have a great day!☺