The Plaza Hotel in New York City is a landmark 19-story hotel on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, across from the southern edge of Central Park.

The Plaza is the second hotel of that name on the site. The French Renaissance château-style building was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and opened to the public in October 1907.

The Plaza was accorded landmark status by New York City's Landmark Commission in 1969 and is the only New York City hotel to be designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Recent history

Donald Trump bought the Plaza for $407½ million in 1988. Trump commented on his purchase in a full-page open letter he had published in The New York Times:

I haven't purchased a building, I have purchased a masterpiece — the Mona Lisa. For the first time in my life, I have knowingly made a deal that was not economic — for I can never justify the price I paid, no matter how successful the Plaza becomes.

Trump sold it for $325 million in 1995 to a partnership between Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Millennium & Copthorne Hotels . They sold in in 2004 for $675 million to Elad Hotels , an Israeli hotel and development group. On March 5, 2005, it was reported that the Plaza will close on April 30, 2005, and undergo extensive renovation, converting all but 150 of the rooms into condominiums and retail.

Movie backdrop

Although the hotel had appeared briefly in earlier films, it made its major movie debut in the 1959 film North by Northwest. It was also a setting for Barefoot in the Park (1967), Funny Girl (1968), Plaza Suite (1971), The Way We Were 1973), Love at First Bite (1979), Cotton Club (1984), the first two Crocodile Dundee movies, King of New York (1990), and Home Alone 2: Lost In New-York (1992).

External links and references

• The Plaza Hotel, from the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts website
• National Historic Landmark listing
• The Plaza Hotel, from the website of a former New York Post architecture critic
• The Plaza: How it was Sold, a December 2004 article from a NYC real estate website
• The Plaza Says It'll Be History After April 30, a March 2005 New York Times article (registration required)