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| photo from the collection of the Library of Congress |
In 1883, the entrance to Central Park at the northwest corner
of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street had neither statuary nor elaborate
landscaping. But it spilled south along
the avenue for two blocks, broad and open enough to earn the title “plaza.”
The plaza marked the northern end of the Millionaires’ Mile which
culminated in Cornelius Vanderbilt’s massive chateau at the corner
of 57th Street (later to be extended the full block to 58th). On
October 13, 1883, New Yorkers got the first hint that a different type of structure
was about to appear in the neighborhood of brownstone mansions and private
carriages.
The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that
developers Phyfe & Campbell had purchased 12 plots “on the Fifth avenue
plaza, extending from Fifty-eighth to Fifth-ninth streets.” The
land was acquired from the estate of John Charles Anderson, who had recently
died leaving an estate of over $7 million.
Pyfe & Campbell planned a splendid apartment house, reported the Record & Guide. “We understand that
George W. Da Cunha is the architect, and that the building will be nine-stories
high, and strictly fire proof.” At the
time, Da Cunha’s latest project (also for Pyfe & Campbell), The Gramercy, a Queen Anne cooperative
apartment house on Gramercy Park, was just being completed.
The Guide said that the new building would “be an adaption,
though on a much larger scale, of the Gramercy apartment house” and would cost
an estimated $1.5 million.
Within a week, the first of the dominoes to fall in what would be a
long string of problems for the proposed building was casually mentioned by the
Record & Guide. In talking to the
manager of The Gramercy, the reporter asked if he thought Phyfe & Campbell
would “adopt the same plan [in the plaza property] as in the ‘Gramercy’?”
Charles A. Gerlach responded that, no doubt, they would, and
the public would know “as soon as the plans of the architect, Mr. Carl. Pfeiffer,
are completed.” It was the first mention of a change in architects.
Within weeks George W. Da Cunha sued the developers for
breach of contract, asking $10,000 in damages.
A panel of architects, including Richard Upjohn, was assembled as jurors. They all agreed there was a broken contract.
Apparently Phyfe & Campbell learned nothing from the
episode. On February 27, 1886, The Record
& Guide published a letter to the editor from Carl Pfeiffer who wanted to
correct the misconception that he was the architect for the rising building. In part it read “I was engaged by Phyfe &
Campbell to prepare plans and specifications for an apartment house on that
site, and which I did prepare, but my plans were followed only until the
foundation walls were up on a level with the sidewalk. I am in no way responsible for the
architectural merits or demerits of the building as erected.”
Phyfe & Campbell had gone with a third choice—the firm
of McKim, Mead & White. This time
they stuck with their decision. It was a
wise move, for the series of misfortunes would continue.
In changing architects, the developers had changed
plans. No longer would the building be
an apartment house, but a high-class hotel.
By the time Pfeiffer’s letter was published, construction was well
underway and a month later the roof was already completed.
On the morning of March 22, 1886, two masons, Dominick
Badaracco and John Lyons, were on the seventh floor, working on
scaffolding. At 9:45 one of the men rang
for more mortar to be hoisted up. As the
500-pound box of mortar reached the seventh floor, it struck the scaffold,
tilting it. Lyons jumped from his perch,
grabbing onto the suspended mortar box.
Badaracco went crashing seven floors into the basement along with the heavy spruce timbers
of the scaffold.
As the debris crashed through the floors, it took construction workers Charles McCauley and Thomas Lenihan with it. The men were found buried beneath the wreck of timbers. Dominick Badaracco was dead and the other two
severely bruised and cut.
In 1887, construction was delayed when John Charles Anderson’s
niece claimed she was owed one-fifth of the property purchased by Phyfe &
Campbell. The issue became more complicated when
a daughter, Mrs. Laura Appleton, filed suit for her one-fifth of the estate.
In the first weeks of 1888, Phyfe & Campbell hoped that
construction would soon resume. The New
York Times, on February 28, recapped the problems. "Messrs. Phyffe and Campbell have had a costly
and vexatious experience with this property.
After they had borrowed $800,000 on it from the New-York Life Insurance Company
and had got credit on the purchase…by means of a second mortgage…litigation
began over the property through the attack on the will of John Anderson, the
tobacconist, who owned the land.” The
newspaper said “The investment, as it stands, represents close to $2,000,000.”
The newspaper was less than complimentary of McKim, Mead & White’s
design. “The structure is strongly
built, though far from attractive architecturally. The dining room and some of the parlors and
suites have been elaborately decorated and require no further work, but generally
throughout the house last touches are needed.
At a low estimate $50,000 will have to be spent to put the building in
fit condition for a lessee to take it.
It will cost the lessee about $150,000 to furnish it.”
Sadly for Phyfe & Campbell, the costs and vexations were
too much. In August 1888, they lost the
unfinished Plaza Hotel with nearly $1 million due on the mortgages. The Times remarked in November that year, “The
undertaking finally caused their ruin.”
The new owner, the New-York Life Insurance Company brought in 1,400
workmen to hurry the construction along.
On January 18, 1890, nearly seven years after plans had been
announced, the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide promised, “The Plaza
Hotel will be opened in the spring.” It
was an optimistic promise. On May 22 The New York Times reported, “There is more trouble over the Plaza Hotel property at Fifth
Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street. This land
has been in almost constant litigation for many years.” Laura B. Appleton had reared her litigious
head once again, now suing the New-York Life Insurance Company for $100,000 in damages.
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| New-York Tribune, Sunday, Sept. 21 1890 (copyright expired) |
“The great dining hall is finished in gold and white with
stained glass windows and an arched roof fretted with gold. There are wainscotings of oak and beautifully
painted panels in this room.” The
windows of the dining room looked out onto Central Park “and all the panorama
of beauty spreads out below.”
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| The reserved facade was broken by the two-story portico, balconies and terra cotta ornamentation. photo by N. H. Tiemann & Co, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York |
Most of the woodwork throughout the building was mahogany. In the smoking room was one piece of
particular interest—a round table, six feet in diameter. The base of the table was formed from the root of
a mahogany tree and, according to the New-York Tribune, “Thirty trees were sawed up
before one was found which would produce the beautiful piece of mahogany which
forms the top of this table.”
There were more than 400 rooms in the Plaza Hotel,
capable of accommodating 550 persons, and it claimed to have more private
bathrooms than in any other hotel in existence.
“Heavy carved mahogany, with brass trimmings in the Colonial style, is
everywhere,” reported the New-York Tribune. “In fact,
there is a strong Colonial flavor in the decoration and furnishings of the
hotel throughout. In some of the parlors
the chairs cost $100 each.”
By the time the Plaza opened on October 1, 1890, the cost had risen to $3 million according to the New-York Tribune—in the
neighborhood of $80.5 million today.
Part of the expense was in the lavish decoration. The mosaic lobby floor featured a lion in the
center—the logo of the hotel—executed in colored glass marbles. The lace shades and curtains incorporated the
lion as well. The New York Times wrote, “the
stalwart beast adorns each piece of silver and each piece of china on the
table.”
“In the café the electric light is filtered through squares
and ovals of jeweled glass and gleams from the brilliant petals of glass
flowers pendant from the ceiling,” said the Tribune.
The Sun added, “The ladies’ parlors—one in pale blue, the
other in a delicate salmon—were especially admired. The care in the execution of detail extends
even to the tables and chairs, all of which are new designs in the most
expensive woods.”
The first grand entertainment in the Plaza was a dinner
hosted by 100 veterans of the Army of the Potomac for the visiting Comte de
Paris. The Plaza dining room was filled
with some of the most illustrious names of the war that evening. During one toast, General Daniel Butterfield reminded
the gathering of the part the prince and other French nobles had played in the
Civil War.
“When the War of the Rebellion broke out the services of
Captain Louis Philippe d’Orleans, Comte de Paris, and Captain Robert d’Orleans,
Duc de Chartres, his brother, were offered to our Government in any capacity.” The men became captains assigned as aides to
General McClellan. “In the discharge of
that duty there was no battlefield or service of the campaign in which they
participated where they were not known for promptness and efficiency in all
details of such duty.”
The Plaza Hotel quickly became a favorite for visiting
dignitaries. On December 14, 1890, The New York Times mentioned that Secretary of the Treasury William Windom was staying here;
and on October 4, 1891 The Sun reported, “Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, wife of the
President, arrived in the city at 6:50 o’clock last evening, and went to the Plaza
Hotel.” Accompanied only by a maid, she
had traveled alone on the train.
About seven months before Mrs. Harrison’s arrival a
disagreement between two employees ended tragically. When the hotel opened, two of the newly hired porters were Seth W. Thomas and 32-year old R. H. Rodgers. Rodgers had just arrived from Wheeling, West
Virginia.
Wages for low-level black employees were low and housing
was relatively expensive. So the
recently-married Thomas took on Rodgers as a boarder. Trouble started early in February 1891 when
Rodgers was let go for incompetency and he began drinking.
The Sun reported on February 17, “Rodgers boarded
with Thomas and the latter’s wife, a mulatto, to whom he has not been married
long. Rodgers was much attracted by her,
and she says, while drunk on Sunday night, he made improper proposals to
her. She drove him from her rooms and
told her husband when he came home.”
Rodgers did not return until the next day and Thomas was
waiting for him. He ordered Rodgers to leave
the apartment. Angry, Rodgers began
packing his belongings, all the while cursing at Thomas and his wife, and according
to The Sun, “they were not slow in talking back.”
Finally around 9:00, Rodgers had all his things packed. As he prepared to leave, he drew a pistol
from his coat and shot three times. One
bullet missed Thomas, the other passed through his hand, and the third entered
his head through the left temple. “The
last, the doctors at Roosevelt Hospital think, will cause his death,” advised
the newspaper. “Rodgers escaped.”
The caliber of guests at the Plaza Hotel was not only reflected
in the names on the guest register—including in 1892 Colonel and Mrs. William
Jay, Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, and Oliver H. P. Belmont; all of whom arrived
from Newport and stayed here while their mansions were prepared—but in the cost
of the rooms. Railroad man Charles G.
Patterson lived here during the winter of 1892, paying $75 a week for his
rooms--more than $2,000 in 2015 dollars.
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| Carriages wait in the snow outside the hotel as an omnibus passes along 59th Street -- photo by Irving Underhill, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York |
Other celebrated guests at the time included Samuel E. Morse
in June 1893, German Baron Munchausen, Major von Meckow, and Captain von
Blottnitz (who had been to Chicago to visit the Columbian Exposition), and in
1894, Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson and his wife.
A month before the wedding of Consuela Vanderbilt to the
Duke of Marlborough, the bridegroom checked into the Plaza Hotel with his cousin
and best man, Ivor Guest. The Duke,
almost immediately, began drawing press attention, not all of it favorable.
He was arrested on October 18 while bicycling in Central
Park. “He violated a Park ordinance by ‘coasting’
down the hill near McGown’s Pass,” reported The New York Times. The Duke “pleaded ignorance of the Park
regulation and on promising not to repeat the offense, was permitted by the
Roundsman in charge to depart.”
Female New Yorkers were probably less apt to forgive the
Duke when he refused to attend the wedding rehearsal at St. Thomas Church on
November 5, 1895. Instead, he and his
cousin went to the Racquet Club for a morning game of tennis. When asked why he effectively snubbed his future
wife and mother-in-law, he replied, “That sort of thing is good enough for
women.”
The Plaza was briefly the center of a socially-scandalous
incident in April 1897. Elliott F.
Shepard was the son of deceased millionaire Elliott Fitch Shepard and Margaret
Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard, the eldest daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt.
Margaret Louisa Shepard was shocked to hear that her only
son (to whom, The New York Times said, she had heretofore “shown great generosity”) had
secretly married Esther Wiggins—the divorced daughter of a storekeeper in
Greenport, Long Island who was about five years older than Elliott.
When his mother found out about the civil service marriage,
she insisted on a church wedding, which took place the first week of April 1897, “although she was too much prostrated by the news to attend it,” said The
Times. The newspaper suggested that the
newlyweds’ financial future hinged on Margaret Louisa Shepard’s disposition.
“Though Mr. Shepard will have to depend on his mother’s
generosity to live in anything approaching affluence, he already has sufficient
income under the terms of his father’s will to support him in comfort.” The newspaper explained, “Of the young Elliott
F.’s one-fourth share of this $5,000,000 he cannot be deprived, nor can he
obtain any of it, except what his mother chooses to give him, until her death.”
Elliott and his new wife moved into the Plaza Hotel after
the church wedding, but it would not be for long. On
April 13, The New York Times reported, “To avoid callers and escape the penalty of the
notoriety that their secret marriage has caused, Mr. and Mrs. Elliott F.
Shepard left the Plaza Hotel early yesterday, and did not return until late at
night. It is their intention to sail for
Europe this week.” Margaret Louisa
Shepard suggested they take an extended trip.
“By the time the young couple return gossip about the affair will have
blown over,” it was thought.
The following day they took their carriage to the White Star
Line pier and boarded the Germanic. The
New York Times reported that they “went at once to their staterooms, where they
remained until the steamer left her berth.
No one could be found who possessed any knowledge of their destination
abroad.”
(Incidentally, the story did not have a happy ending. Shepard went into business in Paris, but
failed. The couple returned to the
United States, but their marriage ended in divorce in 1902.)
On January 17, 1902, fire broke out in the suite occupied by
the family of Ernest Staples on the seventh floor. Guests were frightened as firemen rushed up
the staircase, dragging fire hoses. “There
was no panic, however, for the elevators kept running continuously, and the
persons upstairs, of whom there were about 300, mostly women, were all carried
down without difficulty, and when they reached the office they were assured
that there was little danger”
The room where the fire started was soon engulfed and the
fire spread into the hallway. Flames “poured
from it into the hall, licked up the woodwork and doors and jambs for a
distance of 50 feet along the corridor, and the deluge of water at first seemed
only to increase their fury.”
Finally the blaze was extinguished and “then it was realized
how well the construction of the hotel had stood the test.” Even though the Staples suite was in ruins,
the structure of the hotel was unscathed.
Nevertheless, the building suffered $20,000 in water and fire damage.
The sturdy construction of the hotel would make little
difference in only five months. The
building was sold for $3 million to Fred Sterry of Hot Springs, Virginia—deemed by the Record & Guide as “the most
important cash sale of real estate in the history of this city." He laid plans
for a new 17-story Plaza Hotel from plans by architect Henry Janeway
Hardenbergh.
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| photo from the collection of the Library of Congress |
In June 1905, the contents of the old Plaza Hotel were
auctioned. The Record & Guide
reported, “The wreckers will begin their work July 1st; and it
is expected to have the new hotel ready for occupancy by Sept. 1st,
1906.”
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| from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York |
I wonder what became of auctioned contents or the mentioned mosaic floor or the smoke room table?
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