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Located at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, the St. Regis will reopen Sept. 10 after a three-year overhaul costing $100 million, twice as much as Donald Trump paid to bring the Plaza up to snuff.
Done up in brocade and reproduction Louis XV furniture, guest rooms in the born-again St. Regis will be larger but fewer than before - down to 356 from 557. One of the suites is being decorated by Tiffany & Co. and another by Christian Dior.
Whoever said the '90s would be gilt-free hadn't heard about the St. Regis.
ITT Sheraton is billing its lavish re-do of the landmark Manhattan hotel as the "the second-largest 22k gold leafing project ever taken in the U.S." (The first is the Mormon temple in Kensington.)
Located at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, the St. Regis will reopen Sept. 10 after a three-year overhaul costing $100 million, twice as much as Donald Trump paid to bring the Plaza up to snuff.
Done up in brocade and reproduction Louis XV furniture, guest rooms in the born-again St. Regis will be larger but fewer than before - down to 356 from 557. One of the suites is being decorated by Tiffany & Co. and another by Christian Dior.
The hotel was built in 1904 by John Jacob Astor, who went down with the Titanic eight years later. In the St. Regis's heyday, its rooftop ballroom and ground-floor Iridium Room, where the dance floor concealed an ice-skating rink, were society haunts. The King Cole Bar was the birthplace of the Bloody Mary.
Guests included Ernest Hemingway, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Salvador Dali. Dali's unpaid bill for $19,000 from a New York restaurant, Laurent, was unearthed in the remodeling, according to publicist Eleanor Lambert. The hotel's design team is describing its handiwork as a "re-creation."
The ballroom and the bar will be back, but not the ice rink.
PHOTO-COLOR CAPTION: The lobby of the St. Regis was a major focus of the hotel's $100 million overhaul.
Copyright The Washington Post Company Aug 22, 1991