Great history of a historical hotel! The cover is gorgeous. Great research. Will be looking into the authors other works

For anyone that loves or has lived in NYC, this book is for you - such amazing research - you’ll find out a whole new history and story to an iconic building/hotel that is just fascinating!

This detailed history of the Plaza Hotel is a mixed bag for the reader, whose enjoyment of this book will be largely dependent on how interested they are in the minutiae of commercial real estate. (File me under: Not very).

There is some fascinating information in this book, to be sure, particularly the chapters that focus on the early history of the Plaza. I just wish the author had focused more on the architecture, design, and goings-on at the hotel rather than the intricate financial circumstances present each and every time the hotel was bought and sold. 

For the record, Satow acquits herself well on that topic in addition to the other parts of the Plaza’s history which were of greater interest to me. The entire book is well-researched and the information always presented well. I just wish the primary focus of the research included had been closer to what is advertised by the publishers summary.

The Plaza Hotel, at the gateway between Midtown and the Upper East Side, operates as its own neighborhood, a fishbowl of wealthy characters and eccentric personalities enamored by the iconic structure’s great charms.

In Julie Satow‘s rich and generously detailed new book, the famous hotel seems to breathe oxygen, its many notable and unusual guests bringing vibrancy to its 112 year old halls. I’m tempted to call this book a biography.

Satow, a real estate writer and New York Times contributor, never treats the Plaza Hotel, a luxury accommodation that most of us have never stayed in, like an untouchable antique. In retelling its history, she always links it to the city at large, to the changing whims of the metropolis.

What made the Plaza so exceptional when it opened in 1907 was that its treasured exclusivity could be admired by the public. The wealthy classes, escaping the confines of Fifth Avenue mansion living, began gallivanting in hotels like the Plaza where their fashions and foibles could be spied upon by the world at large.

“The Plaza and its compatriots became preeminent places to show off, enjoy one’s wealth and cement one’s status in high society,” writes Satow. “At the Plaza you could march through the lobby in the latest fashion and be assured of appearing in the society column, the hotel hallways being clogged with reporters in search of gossip to fill the next day’s papers.”

But the Plaza was not always filled with admirable or even friendly people, and sometimes likable people became irritable and weird here. The great Enrico Caruso once destroyed the hotel’s entire clock system in messy tantrum. So many wealthy dowagers lived at the hotel that they were at one point dubbed “the thirty-nine widows of the Plaza.”

The Plaza’s financial troubles paralleled those of the city at large, and the 1960s and 70s saw some dark times. They even evicted the beloved Eloise author Kay Thompson from her room. Madness!

And then Donald Trump arrives, purchasing his personal Mona Lisa (as he referred to it) in 1988. This accounts for his cameo appearance in the film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York which prominently featured the Plaza. It would cause the hotel some grief in later years.

“Once, a Plaza employee got in the elevator with a family decked out in bather suits and swim goggles. She informed the disappointed tourists that unlike in the movie, the real Plaza had no pool.”

I read this book during my annual trip to NYC and loved reading it as I was in the city (and in the Plaza having lunch in the basement food court and stopping by the Eloise portrait upstairs). In particular, the early history of the Plaza was new and interesting to me. Well researched and hitting the highlights that I found particularly interesting, this is a fabulous book to read for visitors to the city and it was in many bookstores and gift shops around town.

Reading "The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel" is an absorbing, deft passage through an aspect of America’s 20th Century, from the hotel’s glitzy unveiling in 1907 through to its most recent bizarre ownerships. An additional layer of enjoyment arises if you ever stayed there, as I did in the early 1990s, for then all the references to the Oak Room, the Palm Court, the chandelier-capped lifts, and the sumptuous location on Fifth Avenue looking into Central Park are familiar. Julie Satow chronicles the high-style owners, the famous or infamous guests, and the fate of the hotel staff. Highlights include the 1964 pandemonium of a Beatles stay, Truman Capote’s gala party a couple of years later, the turbulent Trump ownership years from the late 1980s, and the almost phantasmagoric transformation into a condominium/hotel complex in the mid-2000s. Is there another global hotel with such a century-plus reputation for luxury and status, such frenetic longing in its history? I doubt it and this excellent book certainly seals its reputation.

I have a fascination with famous hotels, so this book was right up my alley.  It started with the building of the hotel and covered all of the changes in ownership and the changes the new owners made to the hotel itself.  The stories of the guests were fascinating and I found myself reading many of them aloud.  My only complaint about the book was that sometimes it felt like it meandered a bit and got a bit off course.  But if you are taking a trip down memory lane, that often happens.

The Plaza by Julie Satow is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in early June.

A chronology of events within the Plaza Hotel from its construction in 1890 into the present-day related to famous guests, extensive & expensive requests, and changes in ownership. Opulent, a little full-of-itself, bigger than big, epic tone, punctuated by media quotes/stories.

I’m a Southern girl, me, and I love a stay at a nice hotel, but glamorous New York City hotels have never been a big part of my life.  However, there are hotels, and there are icons – like The Plaza.  Today’s Plaza is actually the second one on the site and opened in 1907, the same year that taxicabs were introduced in New York.  The Plaza.  Let’s do a little name-dropping here.  The first recorded guest – Alfred G. Vanderbilt.  There’s F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, Conrad Hilton, Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball.  Donald Trump longed to own The Plaza, made a woefully bad deal to get it, and Ivana managed it as their marriage and fortune dissolved.  Hotel as residence was a strange concept to me, but over the years, this grandest of hotels was home to many notable and wealthy folks.  Frank Lloyd Wright was one, and you’ll love the Thirty-Nine Widows who lingered on and on as residents.  Through two World Wars, Prohibition, the Great Depression, New York City’s financial perils, economic booms and busts, The Plaza held on, and its story, as told by Julie Satow, is a wonderfully entertaining one.  Oh, you know who else lived at The Plaza?  Kay Thompson and Eloise!  Visit there or move right on in as you read this delightful book.

Make a reservation for this title at your local bookseller on June 4.

Full Disclosure:  A review copy of this book was provided to me by Twelve Books via NetGalley.  I would like to thank the publisher and the author for providing me this opportunity.  All opinions expressed herein are my own.