Plaza Hotel NYC

Plaza Hotel, New York City (2)

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Another view of the Plaza Hotel and Grand Army Plaza, taken from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, around 1907-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The hotel in 2016:

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This view of the Plaza Hotel shows the building from the Fifth Avenue side, a block away from where the photos in the previous post were taken. As mentioned in that post, the hotel was built in 1907, on the site of an earlier, much smaller Plaza Hotel. It was built right next to Grand Army Plaza, which is seen in the foreground, and also next to the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, whose wrought-iron fence and gates are visible on the far left.

At first glance, the hotel appears to look the same in both photos, but the left side of the building is actually significantly longer. This was the result of a 300-room expansion along West 58th Street in 1920, which replaced many of the earlier low-rise buildings that appear in the first photo. A few years later, in 1926, the nearby Vanderbilt House was demolished, and today the Plaza Hotel is the only surviving building from the first photo. Aside from the addition, the hotel retains its original exterior appearance, and today it is one of two New York City hotels, along with the Waldorf-Astoria, to be listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Plaza Hotel, New York City

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The Plaza Hotel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 59th Street, around 1907-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

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The hotel in 2016:

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New York’s Plaza Hotel is named for the Grand Army Plaza, which is located here at the southeast corner of Central Park. It has since become a prominent historic landmark, but when the first photo was taken it was virtually brand new. It replaced an earlier Plaza Hotel that had been completed in 1890. This eight-story building was damaged by a fire in 1902, and although it remained structurally sound, it was sold and demolished a few years later.

The new owner hired architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, whose previous commissions included the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His design for the new Plaza Hotel was no less grand, and the 17-story hotel was completed in 1907 after two years of construction, at a cost of $12.5 million. Over the years, the hotel has seen plenty of wealthy, prominent guests, as well as some notable owners. Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels, purchased it in 1943 for $7.4 million and, after changing hands several more times, it was sold to Donald Trump in 1988 for $407.5 million.

Since then, it has gone through several more ownership changes, and from 2005-2008 the century-old hotel was significantly remodeled. Many of the hotel rooms were converted into condominium units, selling for upwards of $10 million per unit. Today, instead of over 800 hotel rooms, it now has just 282 in addition to the 181 condominiums. However, on the exterior the hotel looks essentially the same as it did when the first photo was taken, and it is listed as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.