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.

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

1891, THE MUSIC HALL AKA CARNEGIE HALL OPENS IN NYC

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music, and she has remembered the Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall), a wonderful place that had its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Meanwhile, The Grangers have been practising some English vocabulary about Animals and Clothes.

Download Animals Vocabulary

 

More information: Animals

 

Download Clothes Vocabulary

 

More information: Clothes

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets.

Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.

Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. The hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, renamed Avery Fisher Hall in 1973 and David Geffen Hall in 2015.

Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a city landmark in 1967.

Carnegie Hall is on the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street and 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City. The site covers 2,565.8 m2. Its lot is 61 m wide, covering the entire width of the block between 56th Street to the south and 57th Street to the north, and extends 46 m eastward from Seventh Avenue.

More information: Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall shares the city block with the Carnegie Hall Tower, Russian Tea Room, and Metropolitan Tower to the east.

It is cater-corner from the Osborne Apartments. It also faces the Rodin Studios and 888 Seventh Avenue to the west; Alwyn Court, the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing, and One57 to the north; the Park Central Hotel to the southwest; and the CitySpire Center to the southeast. Right outside the hall is an entrance to the New York City Subway's 57th Street–Seventh Avenue station, served by the N, ​Q, ​R, and ​W trains.

Carnegie Hall is part of an artistic hub that developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Its opening in 1891 directly contributed to the development of the hub. The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Osborne Apartments, and the Rodin Studios. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who funded its construction. It was intended as a venue for the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society, on whose boards Carnegie served. Construction began in 1890, and was carried out by Isaac A. Hopper and Company.

Although the building was in use from April 1891, the official opening night was May 5, with a concert conducted by Walter Damrosch and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1925, when Carnegie's widow sold it to a real estate developer, Robert E. Simon. When Simon died in 1935, his son, Robert E. Simon, Jr., became owner.

More information: Classic New York History

On the corner of 57th and 7th Avenue sits
the most famous concert hall in the world.
No less a figure than when Tchaikovsky
led the first performances in 1891.
Virtually every major artist has performed there.
There is simply no place like it.
The first time I stepped foot in Carnegie Hall was in 1964.

Leonard Slatkin

EASTER IN NYC. DISCOVERING ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL

Today, The Grandma has visited St. Patrick's Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan to commemorate Easter. 

St. Patrick's Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City.

It is the seat of the Archbishop of New York as well as a parish church. The cathedral occupies a city block bounded by Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, 50th Street, and 51st Street, directly across from Rockefeller Center. Designed by James Renwick Jr., it is the largest Gothic Revival Catholic cathedral in North America.

The cathedral was constructed starting in 1858 to accommodate the growing Archdiocese of New York and to replace St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.

Work was halted in the early 1860s during the American Civil War; the cathedral was completed in 1878 and dedicated on May 25, 1879. The archbishop's house and rectory were added in the early 1880s, both by James Renwick Jr., and the spires were added in 1888.

A Lady chapel designed by Charles T. Mathews was constructed from 1901 to 1906. The cathedral was consecrated on October 5, 1910, after all its debt had been paid off. Extensive restorations of the cathedral were conducted several times, including in the 1940s, 1970s, and 2010s.

More information: Saint Patrick's Cathedral

St. Patrick's Cathedral is clad in marble and has several dozen stained glass windows. It measures 101 m long, with a maximum width of 53 m at the transepts. The bronze doors that form the cathedral's main entrance on Fifth Avenue are flanked by towers with spires rising 100 m. The northern tower contains nineteen bells, and the interior has two pipe organs. Inside is a nave flanked by several chapels; two transepts; a chancel and apse; and a crypt. East of the apse are the rectory, Lady chapel, and archbishop's residence facing Madison Avenue. The cathedral is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Diocese of New York was founded by Pope Pius VII in 1808. 

St. Patrick's was founded shortly afterward to serve New York City's small, but growing, Catholic population, which could no longer fit in St. Peter's Church. A site was selected on Mulberry Street in what is now Lower Manhattan, and St. Patrick's Old Cathedral was dedicated in 1815. At the time, there were 15,000 Catholics in the diocese.

In March 1810, the Rev. Father Anthony Kohlmann bought the land on which the present cathedral stands. The site was bounded by what is now Fifth Avenue on the west, 51st Street on the north, Madison Avenue to the east, and 50th Street on the south.

The Jesuit community built a college on the site, which at the time was north of New York City proper. It contained a fine old house which was fitted with a chapel of St. Ignatius.

In 1813, the Jesuits sold the lot to the Diocese of New York. The school closed in 1814 and the diocese gave the property to Dom Augustin LeStrange, the abbot of a community of Trappists who were fleeing persecution by French authorities. In addition to a small monastic community, they looked after orphans. With the downfall of Napoleon, the Trappists returned to France in 1815, but the neighbouring orphanage was maintained by the diocese into the late nineteenth century.

The new St. Patrick's Cathedral opened on May 25, 1879. Thirty-five bishops and six archbishops attended the dedication.

St. Patrick's Cathedral was designed by James Renwick Jr. with influences from English, French, and German Gothic architecture. It is the largest Gothic Revival Catholic cathedral in North America, as well as the first major Gothic Revival cathedral in the United States.

St. Patrick's Cathedral was described by CNN in 2020 as being an essential part of New York City's architectural heritage. The cathedral serves as the seat for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and as a parish church for the archdiocese within Manhattan.

There are nineteen bells at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The bells were created by the firm of Messrs. Paccard in France and installed in 1897.

St. Patrick's Cathedral has two pipe organs with more than 9,000 pipes, 206 stops, 150 ranks, and 10 divisions between them. The two organs are the Gallery Organ, completed in 1930, and the Chancel Organ, completed in 1928; both were manufactured by George Kilgen & Son.

More information: Forbes

 I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated
and least of all the faithful
and despised in the eyes of many.

Saint Patrick

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

1891, THE MUSIC HALL AKA CARNEGIE HALL OPENS IN NYC

Today, The Grandma has continued listening to some music. She has chosen classical music, and she has remembered how on a day like today in 1891, the Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets.

Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.

Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. The hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, renamed Avery Fisher Hall in 1973 and David Geffen Hall in 2015.

Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a city landmark in 1967.

Carnegie Hall is on the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street and 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City. The site covers 2,565.8 m2. Its lot is 61 m wide, covering the entire width of the block between 56th Street to the south and 57th Street to the north, and extends 46 m eastward from Seventh Avenue.

More information: Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall shares the city block with the Carnegie Hall Tower, Russian Tea Room, and Metropolitan Tower to the east.

It is cater-corner from the Osborne Apartments. It also faces the Rodin Studios and 888 Seventh Avenue to the west; Alwyn Court, the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing, and One57 to the north; the Park Central Hotel to the southwest; and the CitySpire Center to the southeast. Right outside the hall is an entrance to the New York City Subway's 57th Street–Seventh Avenue station, served by the N, ​Q, ​R, and ​W trains.

Carnegie Hall is part of an artistic hub that developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Its opening in 1891 directly contributed to the development of the hub. The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Osborne Apartments, and the Rodin Studios. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who funded its construction. It was intended as a venue for the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society, on whose boards Carnegie served. Construction began in 1890, and was carried out by Isaac A. Hopper and Company.

Although the building was in use from April 1891, the official opening night was May 5, with a concert conducted by Walter Damrosch and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1925, when Carnegie's widow sold it to a real estate developer, Robert E. Simon. When Simon died in 1935, his son, Robert E. Simon, Jr., became owner.

More information: Classic New York History

On the corner of 57th and 7th Avenue sits
the most famous concert hall in the world.
No less a figure than when Tchaikovsky
led the first performances in 1891.
Virtually every major artist has performed there.
There is simply no place like it.
The first time I stepped foot in Carnegie Hall was in 1964.

Leonard Slatkin