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Abstract
The Plaza also is a favorite of film directors; it plays a role in about three dozen movies. Among them: "Barefoot in the Park," "The Great Gatsby," "King of New York," "The Way We Were," "North by Northwest," "Home Alone 2," "Funny Girl," "Crocodile Dundee," and, of course, the film version of playwright Neil Simon's 1969 Broadway paean to the hotel itself: "Plaza Suite."
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Very soon, the legendary Plaza, the high-society hostelry that has been making memories for New Yorkers for the last 98 years, may itself be little more than a memory.
For now, doormen in gold braid-trimmed livery still guard the portals of an old-fashioned world where the chandeliers are crystal and the furniture favors gilt. An imposing vase of flowers, scenting the air with stargazer lilies, still graces the marble-topped table in the Fifth Avenue lobby. And, in the late afternoon, the silvery sound of a harpist playing Pachelbel's Canon still mingles with the clink of china and the murmur of voices as tea is served in the elegant Palm Court.
But, as of April 30, this fabled French Renaissance-style showpiece, with its signature green copper mansard roof and riveting guest register, will close its doors.
Over the following 18 months, new owners plan to transform the Plaza. The 805 guest rooms will turn into about 200 luxury condominiums overlooking Central Park, and a 150-room hotel on the East 58th Street side. Upscale retailing will move into beloved spaces like the Grand Ballroom, where generations of debutantes have come out to society, married and danced as dowagers.
The facts of this real estate transaction are as simple as the emotions they evoke are complex.
Like a host of hoteliers in Manhattan, Elad Properties, an Israel- based firm that bought the Plaza last August for $675 million, is cashing in on a breathtaking boom in residential real estate prices. Soaring values make it more lucrative to sell square footage as condos, currently going for an average $1.2 million, than to rent it out as guest rooms, no matter how stratospheric the rate.
Currently, hotels converting to condos and co-ops include the venerable Stanhope, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Sheraton Russell; Empire; Mayflower; Gramercy Park; Intercontinental Central Park South; Barbizon; Olcott; Wall Street Regent; Delmonico, and about 19 percent of the rooms in the St. Regis.
Only the news of the Plaza's closing, however, unleashed such a torrent of anger and emotion. In recent weeks, that translated into a street demonstration by employees, pilgrimages by guests from afar, the establishment of Plaza rescue Web sites and passionate appeals to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to safeguard some of the hotel's famous public rooms.
"I have to say I haven't seen so many people so concerned about a building in a long time," said Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, a private, non-profit organization.
"The Plaza means a lot to New Yorkers and to people outside New York," said Breen, who grew up in Upstate New York and remembers "being taken to tea at the Palm Court as a big treat on trips to New York."
It means so much to Joan Yatsko that she and two colleagues in a New Jersey radiology office created the Web site www.friendsoftheplaza.com and are collecting online signatures for a petition to save the hotel. "My parents spent their wedding night there in 1947," said Yatsko, 49. "Growing up, it was always like the Plaza was the epitome of class."
On a recent springlike day, Michael Newman stood staring at the broad six-column hotel entrance with its Edwardian glass marquee. An attorney who now lives in San Francisco, Newman, 48, spent much of his life in New York and has fond memories of the Plaza.
"I remember having tea in the Palm Court. With my wife's family, we would go to the Oak Room for Christmas Eve. It was kind of a tradition. Actually, I'm staying here because I'd never stayed here before," he said.
"It seems like everyone you bump into these days has a Plaza story," said Peter Ward, chairman of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, the union for about 85 percent of the city's 26,000 hotel workers, including 900 at the Plaza.
Dimas Caro, arranging magazines in the hotel gift shop recently, is one of them. "It's overwhelming for us," said Caro, 47, who has worked at the Plaza for six years. "You think you have a job and it's a lifetime commitment--aside from the fact that it is an institution that we all have loved for so many years."
Rally planned for Monday
On its www.savetheplaza.com Web site, the union urged members to come to a noon Save the Plaza rally in front of the hotel on Monday with guest speaker Jesse Jackson.
Although Mayor Michael Bloomberg has encouraged talks between Elad and the union, Caro said he and many colleagues expect to be unemployed come May.
Ward, who was married 22 years ago in the Plaza's Grand Ballroom, is determined to stem the loss of jobs in an industry that has seen the conversion trend claim more than 3,000 hotel rooms in recent years and, with them, thousands of jobs.
His union joined the conservancy and others in petitioning the landmarks commission to protect the most important interior public rooms in a building whose exterior received landmark status in 1969.
The commission, which often operates at a glacial pace, rendered an unexpectedly swift decision March 8. It "calendared" six of the most prominent Plaza rooms: the Palm Court with its columns and faux skylight; the ornate, wood-paneled Oak Room and Oak Bar; the historic Grand Ballroom, and the lobbies on Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street, also known as Central Park South.
Robert Tierney , chairman of the city's landmarks commission, said those are the six most crucial rooms at this time and would not elaborate on why the Edwardian Room, which has been redone as CPS One restaurant, did not make the list.
To be calendared means that the rooms will be the subject of an as-yet-unscheduled public hearing on their eligibility for landmark status and may not be touched until that is resolved, said Tierney,
Interior spaces deemed landmarks are rare. "Of the 1,200 or so individual landmarks in New York City, approximately 100 are interior spaces," said Tierney, listing the main waiting room in Grand Central Terminal, Radio City Music Hall, and the interior of The Four Seasons restaurant designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson as examples.
As the conservancy's Breen pointed out, landmarking doesn't regulate the use of a space, just the preservation of its architectural details. In other words, even if the Grand Ballroom becomes a landmark, it may never see a waltz again.
When considering a space for landmark status, the commission primarily assesses its architectural merit and its history. Regarding the latter, a well-worn New York saying goes, "Nothing unimportant ever happens at the Plaza." Indeed, when New York City, bidding for the 2012 Olympics, wanted to impress the visiting International Olympic Committee members last month, it put them up at the Plaza.
Designed primarily as a residential hotel by Henry Hardenbergh , the 19-story Plaza opened its doors on Oct. 1, 1907. The tone immediately was set when socialite Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt became the first residential guest to sign the register.
Kings, queens and Beatles
Every U.S. president since William Taft has made at least one visit to the Plaza. Not to mention a parade of kings and queens and a galaxy of cultural stars from Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald to the Beatles and architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who kept a suite there during the construction of his Guggenheim Museum.
Over the years, the Grand Ballroom has been a favorite place for New York weddings, including such nuptials as Pat Kennedy and Peter Lawford, Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower, then-Plaza owner Donald Trump and Marla Maples and, in 2000, the $1.7 million spectacular uniting Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The hotel is the subject of several books, but many people best know it from the "Eloise" series. Begun in 1955 by Kay Thompson, the books, and later the film, chronicle the life of Eloise, a spoiled, but charming, 6-year-old who lives with her British nanny in the Plaza and drives the management crazy.
The Plaza also is a favorite of film directors; it plays a role in about three dozen movies. Among them: "Barefoot in the Park," "The Great Gatsby," "King of New York," "The Way We Were," "North by Northwest," "Home Alone 2," "Funny Girl," "Crocodile Dundee," and, of course, the film version of playwright Neil Simon's 1969 Broadway paean to the hotel itself: "Plaza Suite."
But Suite 723, the trysting spot for the "Plaza Suite" lovers, likely will disappear in the renovations, as private rooms can't get landmark status.
No matter what changes the property undergoes, it still will be called the Plaza. Said Elad spokesman Steve Solomon, "Why would they change the most famous name in New York City?"
PHOTOS 2; Caption: PHOTO (color): Eloise lives at The Plaza. And 200 condo owners may too. PHOTO (color): Veteran doormen Mickey Pierce (left) and Tony Guerrero are among the hundreds of Plaza employees who could lose their jobs. AP photo by Mary Altaffer.
(Copyright 2005 by the Chicago Tribune)