Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)When someone mentions The Plaza what do you first think of? Luxury? Eloise? Donald and Ivana? Dietrich or Garbo or F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in residence? The Pulitzer Fountain? The final scene from "The Way We Were?"
All of them and many, many more are here in this deluxe book about this deluxe hotel. Chock full of blueprints, wonderful photographs and reproductions of menus and paintings and postcards, this book is not just a history of a hotel...it is, truly, a history of New York City which is host to the hotel. You will learn how specific rooms (The Palm Court, The Edwardian Room, The Oak Room, etc.) were "born", how, when and why celebrities like Frank Lloyd Wright lived at the hotel, how various suites came to be decorated by and named after people like Cecil Beaton, what the scandal was caused by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, how the Duke and Duchess of Windsor celebrated their anniversary here and how Patricia Kennedy and Peter Lawford celebrated their marriage here. There are revealing photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with her husband and son avoiding the paparazzi, John and Yoko enjoying an obviously romantic lunch, Truman Capote's Black and White party and so many of the entertainers who performed at the famous Persian Room: Shirley Bassey, Ethel Merman, The Mills Brothers, Kay Thompson (mother to Eloise), Eartha Kitt, Bob Hope, Liberace, Diahann Carroll, etc. There is even an entire chapter on the many movies that were filmed at the hotel, beginning with Hitchcock's masterpiece, "North By Northwest."
All of Gathje's research is well documented and written in a fascinating style: charming, inviting, intimate, warm, classy and yet filled with good humor. RECOMMENDED.
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At The Plaza is a pictorial record and an anecdotal history of the world's most famous hotel: New York's Plaza.As a story, it traverses the breadth and scope of Gotham's high society during the American Century.As a photo collection, it's like no other, capturing the hotel's remarkable presence on the ever-changing New York scene.For almost one hundred years, The Plaza has mirrored the social history of Manhattan: its tastes in design, entertainment, restaurants and accommodations, as well as its adjustment to Prohibition, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, women's rights, smokers' rights, animals' rights and British rock-and-roll.The first guests to sign the register-Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt-set the standard for the long procession of luminaries that followed: Mark Twain, Diamond Jim Brady, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the Beatles, among many others.In At The Plaza, the hotel's official historian has compiled a tremendous collection of photographs and vignettes chronicling the colorful history of a building, an institution, and a city.
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