NEW YORK CITY’S REFURBISHED PLAZA HOTEL IS BACK IN GLITTERING STYLE
NEW YORK | The bill for a night’s stay at the newly refurbished Plaza Hotel is not just for gold-trimmed sheets and white-glove service. It’s for legend, history, a cocoon from the noisy, frenetic city, and for memories.
The Plaza, at 59th Street just off Fifth Avenue, is the only hotel in New York City designated a National Historic Landmark. After nearly three years of renovations, it reopened in early March, pared from 805 guest rooms to 282. The rest of the building has been converted to condominium apartments, one of which recently sold for $50 million.
In recent years the Plaza has gone through a succession of owners, none of whom seemed able to make a profit on the aging grande dame of Central Park South. Novelist Jeff Rovin remembers staying at the Plaza in 1987 and being surprised at “how inelegant the rooms were. I was expecting gilt, not peeling paint.”
Were he to stay there now, he would find an abundance of gilt.
Guest room furnishings are Louis XV, with graceful swags and gold trim. But the electronics are 21st century, including an iPod dock and a wall-mounted touch screen to summon room service, communicate with the concierge for restaurant reservations and theater tickets, change the room temperature or turn on the flat-screen TV.
Standard guest rooms start at $775 a night.
This buys a high-ceilinged room of 475 square feet overlooking a courtyard or the street (not Central Park, which is on the residential side of the building), the ministrations of a 24-hour-a-day butler and a bathroom with marble sinks and gold-plated faucets.
For those who require more, the 4,000-square-foot Royal Plaza Suite features three bedrooms, an exercise facility, a media room and a library. That’s $20,000 a night. There are numerous options in between.
Over the last century the Plaza has welcomed celebrities and royalty and accrued a patina of legends. In 1908, a year after the hotel opened, a Russian princess moved in along with her pet lion cub.
Subsequent guests included Mark Twain, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the Beatles.
Frank Lloyd Wright stayed there on and off for six years while he was supervising the construction of the Guggenheim Museum.
The ballroom, which can hold up to 700 people, has had a face-lift as part of the $400 million renovation and is now a confection of white and gold paint, crystal chandeliers and mirrors.
The ballroom is landmarked, but the hotel lobby is brand new, carved from former meeting rooms and seamlessly melded with older sections of the building.
Its coffered ceiling, massive chandeliers, tall windows, giant bouquets of orchids and potted palms look as if they’ve always been there. Guests sit in plush chairs and drink Champagne while attentive waiters bring “light fare.”
The most beloved public rooms of the hotel, however, are probably the Oak Room and Oak Bar and the Palm Court. The Oak Room was paneled in dark oak and outfitted with manly, Germanic murals when it was installed in 1907.
The contiguous Oak Bar was the office of brokerage firm E.F. Hutton until 1945, when it was converted to its present use. These rooms for drinking and dining are to reopen in late summer.
The Palm Court has already reopened and is lovelier than ever. The food is better than ever, too (and more expensive). Accompanied by a harpist, afternoon tea is an exquisite repast of crustless, miniature sandwiches, scones, jam and clotted cream and delicate pastries served with pots of exotic teas.
The basic tea costs $60 per person. For an additional $40 per person, guests get caviar, truffles and lobster salad — and for $20 more, a choice of Champagne or sherry.
Eloise, the spirited girl who lived at the Plaza as imagined by author Kay Thompson and depicted by Hilary Knight, has yet to have her portrait rehung in its old place overlooking the Palm Court (it will be back), but young girls in charming frocks have already returned to take tea with their parents and other grown-ups.
Some of the waiters who used to work in the Palm Court also have come back and, like those who came before, will hopefully be there long enough to see the girls (and boys) they serve today grow up and come for tea at the Palm Court with children of their own.
TRAVELER’S CHECK | PLAZA HOTEL
The Plaza Hotel is at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York. Rooms begin at $775 a night. www.fairmont.com/theplaza or 212-759-3000.
After a $400 million, two-year, lobby-to-roof renovation, the Plaza has been restored to its legendary status. This photo released by the hotel shows the Palm Court and a re-creation of the original stained-glass dome.
Manhattan’s historic Plaza Hotel reopened in March after extensive renovations and partial conversion to condominiums.Terese Loeb Kreuzer is the editor of the Travel Arts Syndicate.
© 2008 Terese Loeb Kreuzer