Tuesday 5 July 2022

THE PLAZA HOTEL IN MANHATTAN, 'THE WAY WE WERE'

Today, The Grandma has visited The Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, and she has remembered Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner meeting by chance some years after their break-up in front of the Plaza.

Meanwhile, The Newtons have continued preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied the Zero Conditional.

More info: Zero Conditional

The Plaza Hotel, also known as The Plaza, is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

It is located on the western side of Grand Army Plaza, after which it is named, just west of Fifth Avenue, and is between 58th Street and Central Park South (a.k.a. 59th Street), at the southeastern corner of Central Park. Its primary address is 768 Fifth Avenue, though the residential entrance is One Central Park South.

The 21-story, French Renaissance-inspired château style building was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. The facade is made of marble at the base, with white brick covering the upper stories, and is topped by a mansard roof. The ground floor contains the two primary lobbies, as well as a corridor connecting the large ground-floor restaurant spaces, including the Oak Room, the Oak Bar, the Edwardian Room, the Palm Court, and the Terrace Room.

The upper stories contain the ballroom and a variety of residential condominiums, condo-hotel suites, and short-term hotel suites. At its peak, the Plaza Hotel had over 800 rooms. Following a renovation in 2008, the building has 282 hotel rooms and 181 condos.

A predecessor hotel of the same name was built from 1883 to 1890. The original hotel was replaced by the current structure from 1905 to 1907; Warren and Wetmore designed an expansion to the Plaza Hotel that was added from 1919 to 1921, and several major renovations were conducted through the rest of the 20th century.

The Plaza Operating Company, which erected the current building, operated the hotel until 1943. Subsequently, it was sold to several owners during the remainder of the 20th century, including Conrad Hilton, A.M. Sonnabend, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Donald Trump, and a partnership of City Developments Limited and Al-Waleed bin Talal.

The Plaza Hotel was renovated again after El Ad Properties purchased it in 2005, and the hotel was subsequently sold to Sahara India Pariwar in 2012 and then to Katara Hospitality in 2018. The hotel has been managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts since 2005.

Since its inception, the Plaza Hotel has become an icon of New York City, with numerous wealthy and famous guests. The restaurant spaces and ballrooms have hosted events such as balls, benefits, weddings, and press conferences.

More information: The Plaza Hotel

The hotel's design, as well as its location near Central Park, has generally received acclaim. In addition, the Plaza Hotel has appeared in numerous books and films. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the hotel's exterior and some of its interior spaces as city landmarks, and the building is also a National Historic Landmark.

The Plaza Hotel is at 768 Fifth Avenue and One Central Park South in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City

It faces Central Park South (59th Street) and the Pond and Hallett Nature Sanctuary in Central Park to the north; Grand Army Plaza to the east; and 58th Street to the south. Fifth Avenue itself is across Grand Army Plaza from the hotel.

The hotel's site covers 4,995.6 m2. It measures 87 m along 58th Street and 84 m along Central Park South, with a depth of 61.21 m between the two streets. As completed in 1907, it measured 44 m along 58th Street and 76 m along Central Park South, with an L running the entire 200-foot depth of the lot along Grand Army Plaza.

The Plaza Hotel, a French Renaissance-inspired château-style building, contains 21 stories and is 76.79 m tall.

The guest rooms have also housed notable personalities, such as opera singer Enrico Caruso, as well as novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald. Frank Lloyd Wright often stayed at the Plaza when he was designing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue, considering the hotel to be his home. Art dealer Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen, who helped assemble the Frick Collection at the nearby Frick House, lived at the Plaza and held important auctions in the ballroom. In addition, the Beatles stayed at the Plaza Hotel during their first visit to the United States in February 1964.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized the Plaza Hotel as a Historic Hotel of America.

More information: Town & Country I & II

The Way We Were is a 1973 American romantic drama film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.

Arthur Laurents wrote both the novel and screenplay based on his college days at Cornell University and his experiences with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

A box-office success, the film was nominated for several awards and won the Academy Awards for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song for the theme song The Way We Were. It ranked at number six on AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions survey of the top 100 greatest love stories in American cinema. The Way We Were is considered one of the great romantic films.

The soundtrack album became a gold record and hit the Top 20 on the Billboard 200, while the title song became a gold single, topping the Billboard Hot 100 and selling more than two million copies. Billboard named The Way We Were as the number 1 pop hit of 1974.

In 1998, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and finished at number eight on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Songs list of top tunes in American cinema in 2004. It also was included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The musical score for The Way We Were was composed by Marvin Hamlisch.

More information: Roger Ebert


I currently live in the Plaza in New York and I love it
-all that history, all those interesting stories.

Tommy Hilfiger

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